


The Long Way Home

by raug_moss



Series: New Beginnings [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Multi-Part Story, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-17 03:02:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5851570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raug_moss/pseuds/raug_moss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meeting Regina Mills has turned Emma's life upside down. After the curse breaks, she has to start navigating her life as Snow White and Prince Charming's daughter while she also sets out on a journey to find Regina. It's not going to be easy but Emma has never been known for quitting, and she isn't about to start now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. From The Other Side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PinkRabbitPro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkRabbitPro/gifts).



> This is the second part of an on-going series. Please make sure to read Part 1 of the 'New Beginnings' series to understand the events of this installment. I know it's been a while but I've finally managed to put together the second part just in time for the last SwanQueen BigBang. It has been fun and I'm very excited for all the stories and art.
> 
> I also cannot thank the amazing PinkRabbitPro enough for the wonderful illustrations. I'm in awe of such talent and my little fangirl heart couldn't be happier. find them here: http://archiveofourown.org/collections/SQBBFeb2016/works/5839243  
> and please leave kudos, comments, and all the love because they are amazing.

Emma cursed quietly as yet another vine wrapped itself around her ankle. She stumbled forward and blindly swung her sword in the direction of the annoying plant. It screeched quietly when she cut it in half and she wiggled her foot to get the rest of the vine to fall off. 

This part of the Dark Forest was a nightmare. From vines attacking her at every turn to ogres and hostile shadows, it had pretty much every monster in the book. And she had studied many books before embarking on this journey. It wasn’t really her strong suit, the research part, but after several failed attempts she had resigned herself to take the time to prepare thoroughly so she didn’t have to come home with empty hands once again. 

Emma huffed quietly and straightened her leather vest, looking around the dark trees surrounding her on every side. The sun barely had a chance to break through the heavy treetops, so she was left to wander in a gloomy light all day until it became too dark to see much at all.

She sheathed her sword and pulled a small golden object from a leather pouch tied to her belt. She knelt down and, with another glance over her shoulder, put the little object into the palm of her hand, carefully opening it to reveal the glowing insides of it. A small blue light illuminated the dark forest and Emma followed it with her eyes as it zigzagged between the trees. 

Closing the little compass with a quiet metallic click she got to her feet once again and started walking in the direction the light had disappeared.  
Any and all horses were absolutely terrified of the Dark Forest, so she had to make the journey on foot. The smell of rotting wood and moist ground had been surrounding her for days and she was just about done with the forest and its dangers. She was tired of having to look over her shoulder at every step, but she wasn’t going to give up. She hadn’t given up in the past ten years and she wouldn’t do it now. 

#-#-#

Emma cradled the crying infant in her arms, shushing him quietly and rocking back and forth where she was standing on the front steps of Regina’s house. Her eyes flickered nervously across the part of the street she could see from her position. It seemed like the entire town was up and about in the middle of the night. There were voices and even screams and Emma had no idea what to do. Her entire body was tense and she was ready to bolt back into the house at the first sign of danger. 

An earthquake maybe? Some kind natural catastrophe? And what about that strange pulse of light and air? Not that Maine was known for getting earthquakes very frequently, but everything seemed possible. She glanced down at Henry and whispered quietly to him. “Don’t worry kid, Regina is probably handling whatever is going on right now, she’s the mayor after all. Something probably happened and she needs to take care of official town business stuff before she can come back.”

Henry seemed to calm a little as she kept talking to him in that same quiet voice, partly to convince herself that everything was going to be alright. 

She took a few small steps back when the voices grew louder at one end of the darkened street. It sounded like an entire group of people were walking down the street, yelling and calling. She couldn’t quite make out what they were saying but it didn’t sound very friendly.

Her eyes widened when she spotted an entire mob of people marching down the street. Where those torches? No, probably just flashlights moving back and forth, but Emma wasn’t about to stick around to find out. Instead, she turned on her heel and hurried back into the house, Henry clutched tightly to her chest. She realized that the cold nightly air had been biting at her cheeks and fingers. Luckily Henry seemed comfortably warm all snuggled up into his blankets. Regina would probably kill her if she found out she’d been standing out on her porch in the middle of the night like an idiot. 

She shifted Henry to one arm and reached out to lock the front door to Regina’s house. She hesitated for a few seconds as the voices from outside grew louder, expecting them to move along and fade but instead she gasped when she saw light coming in through the windows of the living room. Were they heading toward the house?

“Shit,” Emma cursed and shot an apologetic look to Henry who had his eyes closed and was breathing slowly and steadily. Good for the kid that he could sleep in a situation where she was absolutely freaking out. 

The voices were now right in front of the door and the noise jolted Emma out of her stupor. She hurried further into the house and toward the telephone. Several numbers were written on a pad next to it and she immediately began dialing Regina’s cell. 

“What is going on?” she hissed and trapped the phone between her shoulder and cheek while she adjusted her grip on Henry.  
The shock of fists banging against the front door caused her to drop the phone so that it clattered to the floor. The noise sounded unnaturally loud in the otherwise empty house. Emma started backing up toward the stairs. 

“We know you’re in there, open up,” a male voice called and Emma’s heart jumped into her throat. 

She held Henry tightly to her chest as she turned and sprinted up the stairs. She wasn’t sure what exactly she was trying to do but all her frightened brain was capable of coming up with was: hide. Just long enough until Regina came back. Everything would be fine once Regina made it back to them. 

Emma hastened into Henry’s room, her eyes immediately locking on the small walk-in closet that held his small clothes and most of his toys. She wasn’t that big, and Henry was absolutely tiny, they could easily fit. 

She opened the door and dropped to her knees, completely ignoring the pain it caused her joints. She crawled forward and into a dark corner of the small space before she reached up and pulled the door closed again. She scooted back until she was leaning against the wall and pulled her knees up to her chest so that Henry was comfortably nestled against her. 

Cold sweat was running down her back and gathering on her forehead. Her breathing was unsteady and the only sound she could make out was the blood rushing through her head. She closed her eyes briefly and took a deep breath, trying to calm herself somehow. Henry’s distinct baby smell helped but she still was not sure she wasn’t going to pass out from how irregularly she was able to suck air into her lungs. Her arms and legs felt entirely too heavy for her body. 

“God, Regina please,” she whispered. 

She wasn’t sure for how long she’d been sitting there when a loud bang from downstairs made her jump. She looked at Henry but he was dead to the world, mildly sucking on his own tiny hand in his sleep. Soon enough she could make out the sounds of steps hurrying up the stairs to the first floor of the house.

Emma tensed and squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t understand how she had gone from having plans to eat dinner with Regina to hiding in a closet. 

“I’m telling you she’s not here,” someone said as the door to Henry’s room opened. 

“She can’t just disappear, the Evil Queen has to be somewhere in this town,” another male voice replied. 

If Emma wasn’t so absolutely terrified she probably would’ve wondered who or what was the Evil Queen, but at the moment the only thing she could worry about was Henry’s safety. She carefully moved him away from herself and grabbed a few towels and clothes from the shelf next to her and arranged them into a small pile on the floor. She deposited Henry in the little hole she had made and covered his body with a light blanket, hoping he wouldn’t get cold if she couldn’t make it back to him immediately. 

She silently got to her feet, still crouching close to the shelf on the floor of the closet, readying her body for an attack. As soon as that thin closet door opened she would pounce on whoever was in front of her. Maybe the element of surprise would give her enough time to lure those people away and if she could make it out of the house she could probably outrun them as well. She was fast. She’d had to be all her life. 

But instead of the closet door opening, the voices slowly faded away. They were moving to other parts of the house and Emma breathed a quiet sigh of relief. She waited for another few minutes, listening intently, before she slowly pushed the door open and peered through the crack into the room. Empty. 

Her hands were still shaking but she managed to step out of the closet without making a single sound. She glanced back at Henry sleeping on his little bed and inhaled through her nose before turning back around and tiptoeing over to the hallway. She leaned forward around the corner to see if the coast was clear but what she didn’t expect was someone coming out of the room at the end of the hallway. It was an unfortunate coincidence that she was smack in the line of sight of the intruder and he immediately spotted her.

“Hey you,” the guy called and Emma took off like a bullet. She was halfway down the stairs to the ground floor before the intruder even had a chance to give chase. She saw a shadowy figure walking around the living room but she ignored them and sprinted right for the front door. She ripped it open and it banged against the wall with the force of her movements. A moment later she had jumped down the front stairs and was running toward the street, her legs carrying her forward as fast as they would go.  
Just as she rounded the corner, breaking free of the hedge on either side of her, she spotted two people hurrying down the street and she quickly ran toward them. 

“Oh god Ruby, you’ve got to help me, there are people in the house,” Emma rushed out as Ruby reached out a hand to steady her.

“Calm down Emma, everything’s going to be alright.”

“Emma,” the other woman next to Ruby gasped. 

Emma looked up from where she’d been resting her hands on her thighs to regain her breath. The woman with the pixie cut was staring at her like she was a ghost and Emma shifted uncomfortably. She vaguely remembered seeing her around town, she was a teacher or something, but they’d never actually spoken. Emma turned her attention back to Ruby instead. She’d somewhat become friends with the waitress during her stay at the B&B and perhaps together they could get to the Sheriff and figure out what the hell was going on in this town. 

“Listen, I need to find Regina and get those people out of the house. I have to get back to Henry,” she said, waving her hand impatiently in the direction of the house. She hoped Henry was doing alright, still sleeping peacefully upstairs. Maybe he wouldn’t even remember any of this. She’d already screwed up royally and she was sure that after this, Regina wouldn’t let her within a five mile radius of Henry.

Ruby and the woman shared a glance Emma didn’t like at all. It was the same one she had seen pass between her foster parents while they were trying to figure out how to tell her that she would have to leave them because they were having a baby of their own. 

Emma spun around when heavy footfalls sounded from behind her. Three men were rushing toward them and Emma took several steps back until she was standing halfway behind Ruby. “They broke into Regina’s house,” she hissed and Ruby scowled. 

“Snow, we couldn’t find her, the Evil Queen is gone,” one of the men addressed pixie-cut. 

“What is wrong with this town,” Emma mumbled, taking more backwards steps away from the people around her. Ruby and the other woman seemed in no way afraid of the crazy burglars and all that talk about the ‘Evil Queen’ didn’t appear to surprise them much. 

Pixie-cut eventually turned to her and raised her hands in a pacifying gesture. “Emma, I know all of this must seem very confusing to you right now, but I promise I can explain all of it.”

“Yeah, I doubt that,” Emma replied, slowly backing away from them. 

Something wasn’t right. She’d always listened to the feeling in her gut, it had often saved over the years except for that one time she chose to ignore it. What she got in return was a prolonged stay at the local jail. So instead of standing around any longer, waiting for those creepers from the house to get even closer, she turned on her heel and took off in the opposite direction. 

She heard someone call her name but she wasn’t going stop, not until she’d found Regina.


	2. Not Giving Up

Emma slowly rubbed the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger. She was absolutely exhausted. She’d been traveling for the past day without getting much sleep and her food was slowly running out as well. And now this. 

She flopped down to sit on the moist ground, not even caring that the wetness would eventually seep into her pants and she would be left freezing all night. She produced the small compass from its pouch and held it delicately in the palm of her hand. She flipped it open and a now familiar blue light danced around her wrist before darting away. Once again it hesitated briefly at the water’s edge before it disappeared into the depth of the enormous lake in front of her. It was so vast she couldn’t even see the other side from where she was sitting on the shore and the thought of these deep black waters holding what she’d been looking for, for such a long time, absolutely terrified her. 

She was still surrounded by the Dark Forest on all sides but somehow this lake had never made it onto any of the maps she’d studied. And she’d looked at thousands of them over the years. It would make sense that this place was protected somehow, magic perhaps, and that not everyone was able to find it, but that didn’t help her in the slightest bit.

Emma pursed her lips and tossed the little compass up and down. She’d come so far and she wouldn’t stop now, but she needed a new plan. A better one. Narrowing her eyes, she decided to return to her small campsite for the night to regroup.

She got up from the ground and brushed her hands across her backside and legs to get rid of the soggy leaves clinging to her leather pants. With a last glance and a sigh she turned away from the lake and headed back into the forest. 

Her campsite wasn’t far and she reached it just in time before nightfall. After gathering some firewood and making a small fire, she walked around the perimeter of her campsite and checked if all the crystals were still in place. The white crystals were actually a present from the Blue Fairy, they erected a protective barrier around her campsite and would keep most magical creatures that inhabited the Dark Forest from creeping up to her in the middle of the night. 

After pulling out some dried meat and chewing on it listlessly for a few minutes, Emma produced a handheld mirror from her backpack and held in front of her face. 

“Hey kid, you there?”

The image in the mirror flickered briefly until her own reflection disappeared and she was greeted with Henry’s grinning face. Emma couldn’t help but smile back at him.

“Hey ma, how’s it going? Are you there yet? Did you find it?” he asked, almost yelling.

Emma laughed quietly at his enthusiasm but shook her head. “No, I’m not quite there yet but I’m working on it. This actually looks promising.”

“That’s what you said last time too,” Henry reminded and Emma sighed. 

“I know, but this time is different, I can feel it, in my gut.”

They chatted for a little while about Emma’s journey so far until it was time for Henry to go to bed. He held the mirror slightly to the side so that Snow and David could crowd in front of it and wave at her for a few moments before the magic stored in the mirror ran out and she was only staring at her exhausted face again. 

The mirror was a find she’d made on one of her journeys and it had turned out to be quite the addition. Without phones or the internet it wasn’t exactly easy to communicate over long distances and even Snow’s birds wouldn’t fly into the Dark Forest. Now she got to see Henry at least a couple of times a week until the magic in the mirror ran out and it had to recharge itself. Kind of like a cell phone after all. 

Emma returned the mirror to her backpack and stretched out on her bedroll right next to the fire. The air was cold but the fire was enough to keep her warm. She crossed her arms behind her head and stared up at the dark treetops that were so thick not even the moon or the stars were visible at night. She huffed quietly and closed her eyes. Maybe a few hours of sleep would help her come up with a plan on how to get to the bottom of that damn lake. 

#-#-#

She gasped loudly and her eyes flew open. It took her several moments until she realized she was on her back, staring at the ceiling of a darkened room. The heat was almost unbearable and she struggled to move her heavy limbs.

“Henry,” she tried to call out, but the hot air in her lungs was making it impossible to scream. 

She pushed herself into a sitting position and looked around. Her eyes hurt from the smoke and she coughed, her lungs burning with every single breath. Her clothes clung to her body with uncomfortable stickiness as she moved to get to her knees.

She needed to reach Henry, she had to get him to safety. Her eyes widened with a thought. Emma. 

Emma had to be in the house somewhere, she couldn’t let her get hurt, not now that they were starting to figure things out. Not ever. 

She managed to somehow scramble to her legs, the smoke still obscuring her sight. She had to get to the door. Hurrying over to one of the walls she followed it around until she hit the next wall. And the next. And the next.

There was no door.

But how was that possible? She stretched her hands out in front of her, trying to extinguish the flames with magic but nothing happened. 

Magic?

She stared at her palms and a sense of dread filled her stomach, settling like a heavy stone at the bottom. Something wasn’t right but she just couldn’t remember clearly. Everything was blurry, only Henry and Emma existed in bright, clear colors. 

The heat increased even further and she stumbled away from the flames licking at her legs until her back hit the opposite wall with a thud. She slowly sank to her knees and cradled her head between her arms, desperately trying to suck air into her lungs. Her entire body shook with every painful cough and sweat ran in rivulets down her back and over her face. The smell of smoke was so overwhelming that she buried her face in the crook of her arm. 

There had to be a way out of this. 

The flames continued to creep toward her as she sat huddled in a corner until they eventually began tearing at her clothes, then her skin. Her screams were silent as the pain overwhelmed her and she eventually lost consciousness. 

#-#-# 

Emma woke with a gasp. She smelled smoke and quickly sat up, looking around in confusion until she realized that it was raining lightly and the fire beside her was no longer burning. She coughed and waved a hand in front of her face before she got up and moved away from the smoke. So much for a peaceful night of sleep. Squinting at the treetops, she realized that she must’ve been out for a few hours as it seemed much brighter now.

She sighed and stretched her arms above her head, slowly moving her head from one side to the other to loosen the kinks on her neck. Sleeping on the ground sure wasn’t helping her back and she was already looking forward to returning to the Summer Castle and its fluffy beds. 

She turned back to the fire and kicked some dirt over the embers before she gathered her bedroll and secured it to her backpack. The light rain was slowly but steadily seeping into her clothes and she grumbled quietly as she pulled her hair back into a ponytail. Maybe it would at least wash away some of the smell of smoke that now clung to her.

Taking one last look around the small campsite, she slung the backpack over her shoulder and took off in the direction of the lake once again. 

She still had no idea what to do about it but if living with Snow White and Prince Charming had taught her one thing, it was to have hope. She wasn’t a very optimistic person to begin with, but if fairytale characters turned out to be actual persons, then she could just suck up her sarcasm and hope for a goddamn fairy to help her get to the bottom of that lake. 

Upon arrival at the shore, she dropped her backpack and sat down on the squishy ground to take off her boots and roll up her pants as far as they would go. She slowly made her way toward the lake, inhaling the slightly moist morning air. Once her feet touched the icy water her toes curled inward and she took a few hasty steps backward, cursing quietly.  
“This is freezing,” she hissed and jumped in place a few times to return some feeling to her feet. She was pretty sure that the coldness of the lake couldn’t possibly be entirely natural. There was something eerie and quiet about it that just didn’t seem right. 

“Alright then.” She went back to her boots and pulled them on. No need to be miserable while she was waiting around for that fairy. 

After pacing along the shore for a while, she flopped down beside her backpack and dug her heels into the moist ground with a groan. Now what?  
She picked up a few rocks and began tossing them into the dark water, causing little ripples across the otherwise smooth surface. Her arm was already raised for the next toss when the ripples appeared again. 

Emma glanced from the stone in her hand back to the water where the ripples had grown larger and were joined by small bubbles rising to the surface. She quickly jumped to her feet and scrambled for the sword that was sitting beside her backpack. The metal vibrated as she pulled it from its scabbard.

She waited with baited breath as the bubbles became bigger until a head popped from the dark waters. Instinctively taking a few steps back, she raised the sword and squinted at the person coming out of the water up to her shoulders. Wet red hair fell around a pleasant face and Emma was greeted with a friendly smile.

“Hello there,” the woman said and raised her hand out of the water to wave at her.

“Uh…hey,” Emma replied, slowly lowering her sword but keeping a firm hold on it. Just because that woman didn’t look dangerous didn’t mean she wasn’t. 

“I’m Ariel,” the woman introduced herself and Emma’s eyes widened.

“Holy shit, like the little mermaid?”

“Little?” Ariel repeated with a frown before she shrugged and smiled again, “I’m here to assist you.”

“You are?” 

Really, Emma shouldn’t be surprised that she was having a conversation with a mermaid right now but there were still some things even she needed to get used to.

“Yes, I’ve heard of your quest from mutual friends and I thought I could assist in getting what you’re looking for from the bottom of this lake. I wouldn’t offer to help retrieve this object for just anyone, but I have an old debt to repay,” Ariel said with a small smile, “and I have some help.” She pointed downwards toward the dark waters surrounding her.

“That’s… great, I guess,” Emma answered finally sheathing the sword.

“How is Henry by the way?”

Her fingers tightened around the hilt once again. “You know of him?”

“Oh yes,” Ariel replied and grinned.

Suddenly it hit Emma. Her mouth fell open and she moved her jaw up and down a few times before words made it out of her mouth. “You… you were the doctor, back in Storybrooke, that was you, wasn’t it?”

Ariel nodded. “Quite a bit of irony, don’t you think? But I suppose I had a pretty good understanding of the human anatomy, maybe that’s why I was a doctor during the curse.”

“Well, you did a great job,” Emma said, still reeling from the revelation. Ariel the little mermaid had not only seen her private parts but also delivered her baby. Definitely a kind of knowledge she could’ve done without. She would never be able to watch that movie the same way again.

Ariel smiled bashfully. “Thanks, I did enjoy it. I sometimes still help seafarers when they get injured or need some kind of medical assistance. To still have that knowledge is actually quite useful.”

“I’d imagine. Henry’s doing fine by the way.”

“I’m glad, it must not have been easy for him. Everything that happened after the curse.”

“No, it really wasn’t, but we’re okay,” replied with a little sigh. She was working on making it okay and she wouldn’t stop until she had succeeded. She owed that to Henry, and to herself.

“Alright, enough chatter I suppose, I’m sure you’re eager to get going. I will go and get the candle for you.”

“Thank you.” 

Ariel winked and disappeared back beneath the dark water. 

“Holy shit,” Emma breathed, she raised her hands and raked both of them through her hair, loosening some strands from her ponytail. She would never get over all of this fairytale crap. Try as she might, it never got any less weird and awkward. 

She was pacing along the shore again until Ariel popped back up about an hour later. A slight glow accompanied her ascend from the water until she was standing on two legs in front of Emma, holding a small wet satchel out to her. 

“Here it is. Wasn’t exactly easy to find, so you’re lucky you have a mermaid on your side.”

“Oh trust me, I am.” Emma took the satchel with a quick smile and opened it to see a thick black candle with red details sitting inside. Perfect.

She closed the satchel and walked over to her backpack to put it inside. One step closer. Emma smiled to herself briefly before she turned back around. “I really appreciate your help, I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t shown up.”

Ariel raised one shoulder casually. “I’m sure you would’ve managed.” She reached around her neck and untied the green ribbon that was holding a small shell. “I want you to have this.”

Emma took a step closer and glanced at the green and blue shell in her hand. “Uh… thanks.”

“If you ever need me again, just whisper my name into the shell and I’ll be able to hear you.”

“That’s great, really. And hey, you should come visit the castle someday, you can meet Henry.”

Ariel nodded with a smile and turned to walk back toward the lake. “I will. Good luck with your journey Emma, I firmly believe you will succeed.”

“Yeah, me too. Thanks again.”

Ariel waved at her when she was hip-deep in the water before she jumped forward and disappeared again, leaving Emma to stare after her for several silent moments. How a mermaid who was supposed to live in the sea could travel to a lake in the middle of the forest was a mystery to her, but then again in the Enchanted Forest nothing was impossible. 

Emma rested her hands on her hips and looked around. Well, that had turned out to be easier than expected. She was fairly certain that reaching her next destination wouldn’t be such a walk in the park.


	3. So Desperate To Find A Way Out Of My World

Consciousness was a tricky thing. Sometimes, when she was sure she was just dreaming, it turned out that she was actually somewhere in between awake and asleep and once she slipped out of this dreamlike state she was right back in the middle of her own private nightmare. 

It was the same routine every time. She woke up, the flames would slowly but steadily close in on her while she was struggling to breathe until they were so close that she could feel them touching her skin. Then she would be dragged back into the darkness again. 

She didn’t want to wake up again, she just wanted to stay in blissful blackness, but this time something else than pain was pulling at her consciousness. It sounded familiar and it took her several moments until she could place the sound. 

It was a crying child. 

Regina’s eyes shot open and she struggled to sit up, coughing as her sore throat protested every sound and movement. She squinted through the smoke. Was she really hearing this? Maybe her mind was playing tricks on her. Maybe she was truly going insane now.

The wails only grew louder and she began crawling toward the sound on all fours. Her knees felt raw as the burning tiles underneath her melted away the fabric of her slacks. 

“Oh god, no, no, no,” she mumbled, her parched lips stretching until they split and she tasted fresh blood on her tongue.

The closer she came to the source of the noise, the clearer she could see the small bundle sitting in a corner of the room. She recognized the blue blanket with its stitched scenery of clouds and birds but she couldn’t exactly remember where she’d seen it before. 

What was a child doing here in this horrid place?

She reached the small bundle and pulled it closer with shaking hands. Inside the blankets was a little boy, so achingly familiar, his tiny face contorted into a scream as he let out a pitiful sound. 

Regina cradled him against her chest, tears running down her hot cheeks and dropping from her chin to the ground where they immediately turned into steam. “Why are you here? Why?” she whispered. 

She turned her body away from the flames so her back was acting as a barrier between them and the child. She wanted to protect him, keep him safe from all the pain. She closed her eyes, silently wishing for everything that was good and right in this world to protect the little boy from pain and suffering.

Time was endless and completely meaningless in this place so she didn’t know much of it had passed when she unfurled from her position and looked down at the little boy in her hands. He was sleeping quietly now, tiny fingers resting between parted lips. Regina chanced a glance over her shoulder and was surprised to find the flames flickering weakly at the far end of the room. The smoke was almost entirely gone and the air felt cool against her still overheated skin. 

What was going on? She couldn’t remember much because her mind was so hazy. She didn’t know how she’d gotten to this place or why she was here, she’d reasoned it must’ve been some kind of punishment. But why would anyone willingly send a child here? 

She glanced down at the sleeping boy and felt like she should know him, remember him, but all she knew was that she had a connection to this child and she would give everything she had to make sure he didn’t have to be in this place by himself. Regina licked her lips, noticing that the bloody cracks had healed. Leaning toward the boy she gently kissed his forehead and watched a small smile appear on his features. Her heart blossomed with unexpected love and she inhaled deeply.

Maybe she would remember eventually, and even if she didn’t, she would get them out of here. If it was the last thing she did. 

#-#-#

Henry squealed loudly and hit the page with both his hands again and again. 

“You really like this one, don’t you?” Emma asked and laughed quietly when Henry turned to her with the widest smile, all missing teeth and twinkle in his eyes.

“Yes,” he replied forcefully and Emma ran a hand through his soft brown hair. She nestled more comfortably into the couch and looked down at Henry tightly pressed into her side so he could look at the book in her lap. They did that at least once a week because Henry was endlessly fascinated with his storybook. Sometimes she was pretty sure he loved it more than he loved her. Then she had to remind herself that it was completely irrational to be jealous of a book. Stupid book.

Henry looked at her and grinned. He was growing so fast and even though she might be a bit biased Emma was quite sure that he was an incredibly perceptive and smart child. She turned the page again and waited for Henry’s predictable noise of delight when he saw the image of the woman clad completely in black. Even though it was only a drawing, Emma could see the intense gaze of the person depicted on the page. She remembered it being leveled at her as if it had been yesterday. 

“The queen,” Henry said, his small fingers slowly tracing across the picture. 

Emma smiled and pressed a loud, wet kiss against his cheek that made him giggle and push her away. “Yes, that’s the queen. She’s had a difficult life but she turned out to be one of the good guys, and you know what?”

“What?” Henry asked, eyes trained on her.

“She fell in love with a little boy,” Emma said, lowering her voice as if she was sharing a well-kept secret, “and guess what his name was.”

“Henry.”

“Yes, you’re right, how did you know that?” 

“’Cause I dreamed it,” Henry replied and laughed.

“And?”

“’Cause you told me.”

“That’s right,” Emma answered with a grin. 

They kept on going through the book, Henry commenting on a few pictures here and there, while Emma read the lines and made the voices whenever the story called for it. When they got to the last pages, Henry stared at the picture of the purple cloud moving across the Enchanted Forest. The next image showed Storybrooke, Granny’s Diner and the street lined with buildings on either side that had become so familiar to her that she would easily be able to find her way even if she was blindfolded. 

“Regina,” Henry said and pointed at a small figure in the upper corner of the picture. Emma raised her eyebrows and squinted at the painting of a woman in a pencil skirt and blazer. 

“Yes Henry, you’re right. I didn’t actually notice that before, but how did you…?”

Emma flipped to the next page, expecting it to be blank as they had reached the end of the story, but instead she stared at a picture of her yellow bug parked askew on top of a stretch pristinely green lawn.

“Holy crap,” Emma exclaimed and almost dropped the book from her lap. 

“Emma,” came a scolding voice from the kitchen, “you know how easily Henry picks up words these days.”

Usually such a comment would’ve earned an eyeroll from her but this time she was staring transfixed at the new page in the book. “That’s absolutely impossible,” she mumbled.

“More?” Henry asked and reached out to lift the page. The other side was empty. “No Regina?”

Snow came into the living room, drying her hands on a dish towel. “When did you teach him to call her Regina?”

Emma looked up with wide eyes and slowly shook her head. “I didn’t.” 

#-#-#

The rain was coming down hard and she was barely able to see past the sheer blanket of water. With a sigh, Emma turned away from the mouth of the cave and stalked back to where her bedroll was sitting in a dry corner. She dropped down and pulled her backpack closer. By now the mirror should’ve had enough time to recharge. 

She stared at the surface and closed her eyes briefly, calling the image of Henry’s smiling face to the forefront of her mind. “Anyone there?”

Her reflection disappeared and she was greeted with Henry basically yawning into the mirror.

“Thanks for the close-up kid, your tonsils look fine from here.”

Henry snapped his mouth shut and held his own small mirror away from his face. “Sorry,” he said, rubbing his eye with one hand.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Emma said quietly. It was hard to tell what time of night it was exactly in the Dark Forest.

“No problem,” Henry replied. He shook himself and after a moment he looked much more awake. The powers of youth.

“So, did you find it?” he asked, an edge of excitement creeping into his voice. 

Emma nodded with a smile and held the candle up for Henry to see. “Here it is, just like we thought.”

“Awesome. I can’t believe we’re getting so close.”

“I know, it seems a little surreal but it is finally time. How about the dreams?”

Henry shrugged lightly. “The same.”

Emma pursed her lips. She hadn’t expected anything else but if she was really getting closer to her goal it would finally mean ridding Henry of these dreams. He had learned to live with them over the years, even to appreciate the time spent in this dream world, and she was thankful that he wasn’t alone there. But to finally be able to have dreams about dinosaurs, flying cars or other stuff kids dreamed about would be good for him.

“So, what’s next?” Henry asked, settling back against the headboard of his bed. 

Emma raked her hand through her hair and tilted her head. “I have to keep moving through the Dark Forest it seems. My little friend here is leading me in the opposite direction now.”

She patted the pouch with the compass inside and put the candle back into her backpack. “I hope there won’t be any magical traps or something like that. I just have to get close enough to use the candle, then I should be able to get any answers I’m looking for.”

Henry nodded thoughtfully. He was a little schemer and she’d quickly found out that he had quite a strategic mind, a talent that David endorsed at every turn. 

“Do you think she’ll know you’re coming?” he asked eventually. 

“I’m pretty sure Maleficent knows exactly what I’m up to, but if you’re asking if she’s keeping tabs on my progress, I have absolutely no idea. Maybe she is busy putting sleeping curses on people and I can just sneak in through the backdoor, who knows?”

“How far do you think it is to the Forbidden Fortress?”

“A few days at least,” Emma answered. The light of her compass grew stronger the closer she got to her intended destination so she had at least an idea of how far it would be after having traveled with it for almost two years. 

“How is everything going over there?” Emma asked.

“School is still alright, sword fighting lessons with grandpa and riding with grandma are more fun though. And Blue is still showing me some magic stuff.”

“Yeah, I still don’t trust her completely, remember –“

“Always keep your guard up,” Henry interrupted, “I know ma.”

Emma smiled and at that moment she felt Henry’s absence like a physical pain. A small painful tug in her chest reminded her that she hadn’t hugged him in weeks and she just missed him so much. If there was any other way, she wouldn’t leave for such long stretches of time, but she was determined to find what she was looking for and nothing could stop her, not even the pain of being separated from her son. 

“Say hi to Snow and David for me, okay? Tell them not to worry and that I’m fine.”

“They always worry, you know.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s what parents do,” Emma replied with a smile and glanced over to the mouth of the cave. It was still raining heavily and the wind had seemingly picked up and was now pushing some of the water into the cave. The noise had also grown louder and Emma had to focus to hear Henry’s next words.

“Please be careful ma, I don’t want anything to happen to you too.”

“I know, I’ll be fine, promise. You know I’m the savior and all that, so I’ll do my saving thing and be back before you know it.”

“Okay.”

She wanted to hug Henry so badly but instead she settled for an encouraging smile and told him to go back to sleep. She promised to contact him again as soon as she got closer to the Forbidden Fortress.

The image in the mirror changed again and she had pocketed it before she could see her own face reflected back at her. Rubbing her fingers across her brow she thought about her next steps. 

She would wait until the next day, or at least until it stopped raining, and then try to make some progress on foot while it was dry. Horses were kind of difficult to come by in the Dark Forest and unless she found some kind of giant wolf she could ride, there was no other choice but to walk. Maybe she should’ve taken Red up on her offer to accompany her, but then again that might’ve just slowed her down.

Whatever, things couldn’t be changed now and she’d already come this far. Rushing it now would be stupid. Patience had become her friend over the years and even though she wasn’t fond of waiting for things to happen, she had needed the time to put all the pieces together and begin her quest.

Emma settled on her bedroll and closed her eyes. She was curious to see what the coming days would bring. There was certainly something in the air, a sense of change, and it felt the same way it had that night so many years ago in Storybrooke.


	4. When The Night Keeps You From Sleeping

Emma pursed her lips and slowly sipped the hot sweet liquid, sighing as it swept across her tongue and down her throat. She reached up and brushed some whipped cream off her upper lip before sucking it from her thumb.

“Hey ma?”

She glanced over at Henry who hadn’t attacked his own hot chocolate yet but was rather staring at it with a thoughtful look. Well, as thoughtful as it could get for a child his age. 

“What’s up kid?”

“Do you ever have weird dreams?”

Narrowing her eyes, Emma scooted around so that her arm was resting over the back of the booth and she was facing Henry. The diner was almost empty at this time of day so no one was actually anywhere near them to overhear their conversation. 

“Sure, sometimes I dream about flying and I think I remember one time a guy made out of gummy bears was chasing me or something.”

She was expecting Henry to raise his eyebrow at her like he sometimes did when he thought she was being silly for no reason, an expression that reminded her so much of someone else who had mastered it to the point of perfection. But this time Henry only stared harder at his mug of hot cocoa. “I only ever have the same dream.”

They’ve had similar discussions before but Henry had never talked about his dreams much. Every time he brought it up he had also been the one to drop the subject again after a few minutes. And since he had absolutely no trouble sleeping and never woke up in the middle of the night from nightmares she hadn’t pressured him. And she knew that for a fact too, having watched him sleep for countless nights after he had talked about dreams for the first time.

“I’m sure you do have different dreams, you just don’t remember them when you wake up.”

“No, I do remember, and it’s always the same thing.”

Emma leaned forward and rested a hand on Henry’s shoulder. He finally looked up and sighed. “And she is always in them.”

“W-what?” Emma tried to remain calm on the outside, but something about the way Henry had just said that made her heart beat faster in uncomfortable anticipation. “What do  
you mean?”

“I didn’t want to tell you because I know you miss her,” Henry mumbled.

“Oh Henry, you can tell me anything, you know that right?” Emma’s voice softened and she pulled Henry into a quick hug. He returned the hug, wrapped his thin arms around her waist and rested his head against her shoulder. 

“I always wake up in this room, it’s always warm and there’s usually a fire… somewhere, I’m not sure. And she’s always there too. She seems happy to see me and then we talk, about a lot of stuff, but every time I try to tell her about Storybrooke and about you I can’t remember. It’s so weird, like in the dream it’s okay but when I wake up I remember I wanted to tell her and it makes me sad that I can’t.”

Emma tried to make sense of what Henry was telling her while coming up with something comforting to say. “That’s okay, you don’t have to be sad you don’t remember some things. Dreams are weird like that. I’m pretty sure it’s enough you’re there and you’re talking when she keeps you company.”

“But I think I’m the one visiting her,” Henry says quietly. 

Emma frowned and held Henry tighter against her. She bit her lower lip in thought before pressing a quick kiss to the top of his head. “Promise me you will tell me from now on what you’re dreaming about, okay? It doesn’t make me sad, really. I told you I’m looking for her and I will find her. That’s my thing, you know. Remember how I found Pongo, and that weird little orange cat?”

“Yeah, I remember,” Henry said and leaned back so he could look at her, “and I know you’ll find her ma. I just… sometimes feel like I miss her, like I don’t remember her, but she’s in my dreams and… it’s weird, like she’s around somehow.”

“I think she is,” Emma mumbled and let go of Henry when he turned back to his hot cocoa to finally take a sip. It seemed like he had needed to get this off his chest and maybe now she would be able to help him make sense of these dreams, whatever they meant.

#-#-#

The little boy laughed throatily, throwing his head back and flapping his hands around. Regina smiled brightly and blew another raspberry at him. She reached out and smoothed some thin brown hair across his head and he smiled at her with bright eyes.

“Ma-ma,” he gurgled and Regina raised here eyebrows. She looked around briefly, a habit she just couldn’t shake, making sure that there were no flames anywhere in the room with them. 

She was leaning with her back against one of the walls and had the little boy balanced on her knees. 

“No, I’m Regina,” she said and blinked. It was as if she’d just remember her own name a moment ago. 

The boy opened his mouth. “Naaa.”

She smiled and leaned in, pressing a quick kiss to his forehead before looking into his twinkling brown eyes. “Re-gi-na.”

The boy scrunched his face and pursed his lips. “’Gi-na.”

Regina grinned and tried again, emphasizing the first syllable. “Re-gina.”

“Re-gina,” Henry exclaimed and she cheered quietly, waving her hands around with the boy’s tiny hands clasped in her own. 

“It means ‘queen’, you know,” she told him and he lurched forward with a squeal. She caught him quickly and sat him into her lap where he could snuggle against her. She closed her eyes and reveled in the connection she felt to this little boy whose name she didn’t even know. The flames and heat were gone for now and she would be thankful for every peaceful moment. 

#-#-#

The wood creaked beneath the soles of her boots and Emma clung tighter to the rope that was the only thing keeping her upright on this decrepit bridge. She didn’t dare glance down to see the water of a river rushing violently far below. She wasn’t afraid of heights but being on a bridge that looked like it could turn into dust at any moment would scare anyone to death. 

Only a few more steps. Sweat ran down her temples and neck but she wasn’t going to reach up and wipe it away, she needed to both hands on that rope. The sword at her hip kept throwing her off balance while the backpack made her tilt backwards whenever she tried to keep one foot in the air while she contemplated her next step. It wasn’t ideal but the other side of the ravine was almost within reach. 

She took a step and her boot went right through the wooden plank. She lurched forward and heard something snap behind her. She whipped her head around and saw the rope opposite her dangling on the side of the ravine. 

“Ah shit,” she hissed as the rope that was holding her up on her side start to unravel. She pulled herself forward with one mighty pull and jumped over the broken plank, sighing in relief when the next one turned out to be solid underneath her feet. She didn’t wait for another second and began running over the planks, jumping across those that had already given away under the onslaught of weather conditions. 

She stumbled a few times but managed to keep pushing forward until she had almost crossed the bridge entirely. The last two planks appeared safe but both cracked in half in rapid succession under her weight and she landed on her knees before she had reached solid ground. The rope on her side finally snapped and she had to let go of it. Now she was kneeling on a piece of wood that could break away at any second with no way to help her keep her balance on either side of her. She was sure it wouldn’t take long until this entire bridge would collapse so she struggled to her feet, her arms stretched out on either side to keep her balance.

Looking straight ahead, she began taking one step after the other. The wooden blanks underneath her boots were wet and therefore quite slippery. She could smell the moist air coming from the river down below as the cold wind brushed across her sweaty face. Only a few more steps. 

She stumbled onto the other side of the ravine and jumped several steps forward until she was safely away from the cliff. Leaning forward and resting her hands on her knees, she took several deep breaths, feeling incredibly lightheaded. 

“Holy shit,” she breathed and shook out her hands to return the feeling to them. They were slightly numb and kind of tingly from all the blood rushing through her head. This wasn’t actually the closest she’d come to getting seriously hurt but it sure didn’t get easier each time.

“Okay, focus,” she reminded herself out loud and straightened up, glancing toward the path that was going to lead her toward the Forbidden Fortress. No reason to look back, she didn’t ever want to see that stupid bridge again. She hadn’t been afraid of heights before but she was pretty sure she was now.

She wrapped her hand around the hilt of her sword and started moving. Her heart kept beating rapidly and she was still a little shaky, but she was just going to have to walk it off. 

Emma followed the path until the trees on either side of her became less green and took on the appearance of scorched wood. She was led to an open field that looked like it had been burned down very recently. She'd heard of the place before and knew that nothing was going to grow here ever again.

The land had been barren for many years before the curse. She didn’t know Maleficent's entire story, the only people who could tell of it were either unwilling or unable to do so. Instead she had tried to piece it together herself and had come to the conclusion that Maleficent was exactly who she should be looking for in order to get some very much wanted answers.

There was no way to tell whether or not Maleficent was expecting her approach but she wouldn’t dwell on it. She counted on the witch underestimating her until she was close enough to use the candle. After going through all the trouble of finding and getting the damn thing into her hands, she hoped that it would do what she expected it to. Magic was quite a volatile thing but in this case she needed it to work perfectly, otherwise she might end up as a piece of charcoal herself. 

Shouldering her backpack with a last fortifying breath, she began marching toward the looming castle in the distance. The Forbidden Fortress, not exactly a very welcoming name. But then again a villain probably wouldn’t be living at a place called ‘the Pony Farm’. 

The ground beneath her feet was covered in ashes and soon her clothes looked like she had rolled around in it. Reaching up and wiping at her forehead with her gloved hand left her with the uncomfortable feeling of dirt on her skin. She frowned slightly as she stepped on yet another burnt piece of wood with a loud crack. The sound seemed amplified as no other noise could be heard anywhere around her. There was nothing left alive, no plants and certainly no animals. 

The trek was much shorter than she had anticipated as she found herself staring up at a dark brick wall a few hours later. 

“Now, how to get into a fortress without being seen?” Emma mumbled. The thing looked much more impressive than when she’d read about it and to say that it was sending straight up shivers down her spine would be an understatement. This was the lair of an actual living and breathing fairytale villain, not to mention a dragon. While Emma had done some seriously dangerous and strange things during her time in the Enchanted Forest, she hadn’t actually faced down a villain before. Not without backup and a seriously good plan. This time, she was alone and had a somewhat hopeful idea of how to go about this. Of course she hadn’t told Snow and David that. She’d actually convinced everyone that nothing could go wrong and that she could easily overpower Maleficent without any danger at all.

Well, now it was time to get down to business and all she could do was hope she didn’t screw it up. 

Emma removed the backpack from her shoulders and rummaged around until she’d found the candle in its satchel and a small map of the fortress that she’d put together after reading a ton of books and seeking out dozens of people who told her everything they knew about it. 

Armed with her sword in one hand and the candle safely tucked into her belt, she unfolded the map and began exploring the wall that surrounded the fortress. There was a way in, she just had to find it.


	5. Every Story Has Its Scars

“My, my someone’s all grown up now,” Maleficent said with a small smirk curling her full lips, “time has been very good to you, my dear.” 

A tiny shiver ran down Emma’s spine at the name but she rolled her eyes outwardly and clutched the sword tighter in her hand. “Let’s save all the quips for another time, okay? I’m actually on a mission here and I would appreciate it if you could just tell me what I want to know and I’ll be on my way.”

Maleficent chuckled and slowly stalked around Emma, her every move predatory, as they faced off in the large entrance hall of the Forbidden Fortress. “Please princess, have you ever known heroes and villains to part ways amicably? Where would be the fun in that?”

“I thought you’d say that,” Emma replied and lunged forward. She closed the distance between them with her blade slicing through the air but before her sword even had the chance to connect with anything solid, Maleficent vanished in a cloud of magical smoke only to appear on the other side of the enormous hall. 

“You’re gonna have to do better than that, princess. If you’re honestly trying to get her back, you’re going to have to do so much better.”

“I thought she was your friend,” Emma ground out between clenched teeth and Maleficent raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow.

“That’s exactly why.” She waved her hand and suddenly Emma was faced with about a dozen swords rushing from the walls where they had been displayed toward her. She quickly decided that fighting wasn’t the way to go so she took off in a sprint and ducked behind the nearest pillar to avoid the swords trying to impale her. Some of them clattered to the ground as she weaved between the columns while others continued chasing her. 

“That’s actually a trick I learned from our common friend,” Maleficent called from where she was still standing at the far end of the grand entrance hall. 

“Great,” Emma huffed as she ducked underneath a large oak table that was stuffed into a dark corner behind two pillars. She felt the wood above her vibrate as the swords buried themselves into the table and she quickly scrambled out from underneath when one barely missed her shoulder by a few inches when it pierced through the surface. She needed a distraction, and quick. 

David had often told her his heroic stories of battling villains and defeating ogres, so Emma was going to take a page out of his book and go straight for the head. She was still hiding behind one of the pillars while Maleficent sent more weapons in her direction. 

She ducked from behind the pillar and deflected an axe that was coming for her arm before she jumped over a sword that was trying to take off her legs. As soon as her boots hit the floor she took off running straight for Maleficent who raised a lazy eyebrow. The witch obviously wasn’t impressed with her kamikaze attack but what she didn’t know was that Emma only needed to get close enough to use the candle. 

She blocked two daggers heading for her throat with her sword and twisted away from the third one that managed to graze her shoulder. She hissed quietly but ignored the pain of the cut. Instead of slowing down she kept running toward Maleficent and stopped abruptly when she was a few feet away to raise her sword above her head with both hands. She hurled it across the distance between them with all her might and as predicted Maleficent vanished in a cloud of smoke before the blade came anywhere near her. 

Emma inhaled two quick breaths, puffing her cheeks while her eyes darted around the sizeable entrance hall. It was lined with pillars on either side with double doors on one end and a regal throne at the other. A tingling sensation at the side of her neck made her whirl around and in the next second she was running straight for the throne at the far end. Maleficent appeared a second later and before the smoke had fully cleared Emma had whipped out the candle and was blowing across the wick. A magical flame burst forward and wrapped itself around Maleficent’s wrists. The witch stared at her with wide surprised eyes as the flame turned into silver shackles that left her completely separated from her magic.

“Ha!” Emma exclaimed with a little fist pump.

“Really, dear? It seems I underestimated you,” Maleficent sighed, “what an unfortunate string of events.”

She turned away, the folds of her cloak swishing across the floor, and walked up the few steps to her throne where she sat with a huff and looked at Emma with a petulant expression.

Emma picked up one of swords that just happened to lie at her feet and pointed its tip toward Maleficent. “Now you’re going to tell me everything I want to know.”

#-#-#

Emma took a sip of her hot cocoa and coughed lightly at the overly bitter taste. “What the hell happened to this?”

“Sorry Em,” Red called from behind the counter and Emma flinched. She’d forgotten Red and her creepy superpower of hearing even the quietest sound from across the street. 

“What did you do to it?” Emma asked, raising her mug.

“I don’t know, I’ve been getting complaints all morning. But you know Granny went back to the Enchanted Forest to visit some friends, and I’m already doing my best to keep business going. I had no idea it would be like this.”

“You probably owe her an apology after this, huh?” Emma asked with a grin.

Red rolled her eyes and walked over to the table to take the mug of hot cocoa away. “Yeah I guess.”

Emma shook her head, smiling, as she grabbed the newspaper from this morning and unfolded it in front of her. Her smile morphed into a frown as she saw the list of residents who had permanently returned to their fairytale kingdoms. Many people had reasons for why they wanted to go back, to reunite with family, to return to their hometowns and places they knew, while others had just as much reason to stick around Storybrooke. Aside from all the modern amenities, magic worked differently here and she could understand those who weren’t exactly fond of witches and ogres terrorizing their families and lands. 

Emma rubbed her fingers across her brow in thought. Whether or not she wanted to, she would have to go to the Enchanted Forest eventually. After a certain Mr. Gold or Rumplestiltskin, how others called him, had disappeared from Storybrooke right alongside Maleficent, many had started looking for a way to return as well. Then a group of dwarves had somehow managed to grow a bunch of magic beans that would open portals. Yeah, not a sentence she ever thought she’d hear, but nothing seemed impossible anymore. 

After having searched every damn inch of this town and the surrounding forest for the past year, Emma had finally accepted that Regina was gone as well. But something about that just didn’t seem right. There was this nagging feeling in the back of her mind that told her Regina would never have left Henry like that, without a word or any form of goodbye. So she had to eventually make her way to the Enchanted Forest to find out what had really happened. She needed closure, because otherwise Regina’s disappearance would always haunt her. 

She’d barely known the woman for a few weeks, but there was something about her that fascinated Emma. Finding out more about Regina’s past as the Evil Queen intrigued her even more. How had this Evil Queen turned into the woman who had taken care of a child as if it was her own?

Ultimately, Emma had concluded that Regina had returned to the Enchanted Forest as well but whether or not that had happened of her own free will was another story altogether. As long as she was still staying in Storybrooke she would go through every book in that library and every single volume she could find in Regina’s house to search for clues. And then she would continue in the Enchanted Forest, not stopping until she had her answers. 

She was ripped from her thoughts when someone sat down across from her and she lowered her newspaper to see Snow smiling at her. “Hey, I’ve been trying to get your attention for a while, you okay?”

Emma nodded and put the newspaper down. “More people left for the Enchanted Forest.”

“I know,” Snow replied with a small sigh, “and I’m sure there are quite a few who will continue to leave, but we’re still trying to figure out a way to travel between realms more effortlessly, so that people can also return.”

“Yeah, but you don’t want some of the people or… things in the Enchanted Forest to come here either.”

Snow reached across the table and cradled Emma’s hand in her own. “We’ll figure it out sweetheart, we always do.”

It was strange, even after a year she still wasn’t used to someone looking at her with the expression on Snow’s face. There was so much love, affection and happiness there – the smile of a mother, really, and it still threw her off to have it directed her way. She was almost twenty years old and she hadn’t needed or wanted a family since she’d run from her last foster home. And here she was, with family members suddenly appearing everywhere and with a son of her own. 

A small part of her wished for some normalcy, or at least someone who understood how she’d lived her life without any support and had still come through. Someone who knew what it was like to be abandoned, to be disappointed by others. Snow and David were wonderful people, but they had no idea of how she’d grown up and the hardships she’d faced. 

She returned Snow’s smile and leaned back against the booth with a sigh.

#-#-#

“Where is she?”

“Always so impatient, you heroic types,” Maleficent drawled. She leaned back against her throne and crossed her legs, shackled hands resting in her lap. “Why don’t we start from the beginning? Or don’t you want to know how all of this came about?”

“I know about the curse and how Storybrooke was meant to be the place where no one could find their happy endings,” Emma answered, still balancing the tip of her sword near Maleficent’s throat.

“Oh but dear, there is so much more to it. I’m sure your mother told you the story of how Regina turned dark after her true love was killed. Perhaps you even heard of her apprenticeship with the Dark One, but there are many things you are missing. Many things she has gone through, we all have gone through, that turned us into who we are now.”

“Regina changed,” Emma hissed. The name felt foreign on her lips and she wished she wasn’t talking to Maleficent about this. All she wanted was to know what exactly happened to Regina and where she was now. 

“She did indeed, but I’m sure you have no idea that she wasn’t aware of her past, or of the curse, when you came to that dreadful little town.”

Emma slowly lowered the tip of her blade and took a small step back. “What are you talking about?”

Maleficent hummed quietly and tilted her head to the side. “It’s true, she took a potion to erase her memories. Smart move, if you ask me.”

Emma narrowed her eyes. “Why would she do that?”

“The Dark One had manipulated her long before she was set on her dark path. She may have cast the curse that brought everyone to Storybrooke, but she was never truly in control. The happy endings she’d taken away from Snow White and that band of sappy heroes were not as satisfying as she’d thought. Trust me, I saw it with my own eyes, even though I didn’t understand at the time. So instead of being reminded of her own loss day in and day out alongside eternal boredom, she drank the potion and became Regina Mills, the mayor of Storybrooke.”

“That… actually explains a lot,” Emma mumbled and began pacing up and down in front of the throne. “So then what? I come to town, she doesn’t know who I am, the whole coma thing happens and suddenly she disappears?”

Maleficent smiled and tilted her head. “You’re not asking the right questions, princess. You do realize that you’re the one who broke the Evil Queen’s curse.”

“I… yes, I know, True Love’s Kiss and all that. But what does that have to do with anything?”

“Quite a lot actually,” Maleficent replied and the chains keeping her hands bound together rattled as she moved to sit more comfortably with her legs crossed. She looked all the way like she was having this conversation on her own terms rather than being forced to talk. “But you’re getting ahead of yourself again, dear.”

Emma sighed and rubbed a hand across her forehead. She should’ve known that it wouldn’t be as easy getting answers from the witch, but if Maleficent wanted to go on a trip down memory lane then so be it. “So, what am I missing then?”

Maleficent smirked, obviously pleased with Emma’s acquiescence. “When you came to town, you started to set things in motion, quite literally. I began to remember, my past, the truth, but you falling into a coma put a stop to my progress for over a year. Once you woke up, I knew it was time to prepare.”

“Prepare what?” Emma asked quietly.

“You see, the Dark One came to this realm without magic for a specific purpose. Something about finding his son,” Maleficent waved her hand dismissively, “and apparently he found him, either by sheer luck or fate, I do not know and frankly I don’t care. He was more than willing to leave this town behind to reconcile with his son and I simply tagged along, without his knowledge of course.”

“I’m aware,” Emma bit out, “but why did you take her? You were friends at some point, how could you do this to her?”

Maleficent pursed her lips and her eyes narrowed slightly. “And here is another thing you don’t seem to understand. We are friends indeed, and that is why I put Regina under a sleeping curse and brought her back to this realm. You have never met the Evil Queen, dear Princess Emma, you wouldn’t have known what to do had she suddenly stood in front of you in all her evil glory.”

“Regina changed, I knew her in Storybrooke, she wasn’t evil,” Emma replied, her voice rising with every word. 

Maleficent hummed and a small knowing smile stretched her lips. “Alas, you have grown into a strong woman, have you not? So trust me when I say that the one thing Regina has always needed was someone to oppose her. You’re the Savior now, and it will be your job to do just that.”

“I don’t understand,” Emma replied with a furrowed brow.

“Ah, I’m sure you will eventually.”

Before Emma could open her mouth to say anything, Maleficent had risen from her throne and was slowly descending the stairs, hands still held together by the shackles in front of her.

“I think we’ve had enough of a history lesson. Let’s get to the reason why you’ve gone through all the trouble of coming here and subduing me with this magical annoyance.”  
Emma watched Maleficent stalk past her toward the middle of the entrance hall. 

“I’m here because I want to know what you did to Regina. Where is she?”

“I’m a dragon, dear, I know how to hide and protect things, so don’t be disappointed you haven’t found her yet. I’ve heard of your travels, actually, and I’m quite impressed with everything you’ve tried to get to me and to her.”

“Then you know that this is not a game to me, I will make you tell me where she is, one way or another.”

Maleficent spun around and chuckled for a moment. “But we don’t want to darken that precious heart of yours, now do we? Relax, princess, I’ll tell you where to find her. The time has finally come for my old friend to rejoin us, and perhaps one day she might return the favor.”

“Favor?” Emma shook her head slowly, “She’s going to light a fireball under your ass for what you’ve done.”

“Very likely, but as I’ve told you already, both of you will eventually come to see things my way,” Maleficent raised her shackles toward Emma, “let’s get down to business then, shall we? Take these off of me and I’ll tell you where she is.”

“Oh no, you tell me first and then I’ll consider taking them off,” Emma replied.

Maleficent rolled her eyes. “Swear it on your son’s life.”

Emma’s eyes narrowed dangerously at the mention of Henry and she raised her sword again. Drawing back her shoulders she stood in a position that would allow her to easily move if the need arose. “Fine, I swear. Now tell me, no more games.”

Maleficent nodded, more to herself than Emma, and sighed. “Alright princess, listen carefully.”


	6. Water Under The Bridge

Regina closed her eyes and focused on her breathing, trying to inhale only quick and shallow gasps of air. The room had once again turned into a furnace and the heat was slowly starting to become unbearable. The flames were not quite close enough to burn her but they were slowly creeping closer. She buried both hands in her hair and pulled her knees to her chest, resting her head between them.

She didn’t fall asleep, she couldn’t, but the room still faded away as she lost herself in her jumbled thoughts. None of them made much sense, but sometimes a flicker of a memory, a face or a smell, appeared and it made her heart beat faster. It felt like there was something else waiting for her outside of this room and she just couldn’t recall what it was.

“Hello,” a voice said and she jumped slightly, her entire body jerking forward. She raised her head and stared at the boy standing in the middle of the room. He was probably seven or eight years old and he smiled tentatively at her. The flames had completely disappeared and the temperature in the room dropped to an acceptable level. 

“Hello,” Regina replied, her voice hoarse. 

The boy smiled and she found herself returning it. She slowly uncurled from her position and got to her feet, smoothing her hands over her slacks and blazer that now looked to be in pristine condition again. 

“What are you doing here?” she asked and a sense of déjà vu rushed over here. Had she done this before?

“I’m not sure,” the boy replied, “I’m Henry.”

“That’s a wonderful name.”

“Thanks.”

They stared at each other for several seconds and Regina blinked as her vision swam for several seconds. “Henry,” she breathed and opened her arms.

Henry ran forward and buried himself into her embrace, tucking his head under her chin. Regina rested her cheek on top of his hair and inhaled deeply. She wasn’t sure why but she felt so much love and affection for this boy that it almost took her breath away. She knew he was the one saving her from the flames and for that she was grateful.

“You shouldn’t be coming here, dear, it is not a place suitable for a child.”

“I can’t help it,” Henry answered, “I want to be here, as long as you’re here.”

“You’ve been here before, haven’t you?”

“I think so.” Henry pulled back and looked around the room before his brown eyes settled on her again. “Have you ever tried to, you know, leave?”

Regina smiled and rested her hands on Henry’s shoulders, silently marveling at his height. “I have, but it’s impossible, trust me.”

“How long have you been here?”

Regina tilted her head slightly and frowned. “I’m not sure, I can’t tell how time passes here. It could’ve been a day, or a week.”

Henry nodded slowly. He seemed to be thinking about something judging by the furrowed brow and narrowed eyes. Regina rested her fingertips under his chin and lifted his eyes to meet hers. “Don’t try too hard dear, it’s difficult to remember things here. Everything in your head is jumbled and you get flashes of things now and then, sometimes a feeling.”

“Like I feel I should know you?” 

“Yes, exactly.”

“I wish I could remember,” Henry said with a dejected sigh and slump of his shoulders. 

Regina stepped closer, wrapped an arm around his shoulders and smiled at him. “Maybe in time we will.”

#-#-#

Emma glanced down at the candle in her hand. She wasn’t so sure that this thing had actually saved her life. Aside from sending a few swords after her, Maleficent hadn’t really put up much of a fight, hell she hadn’t even gone full-on dragon mode. Emma narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips, her eyes moving from the candle to the path she was currently following. 

It seemed almost as if Maleficent had been testing her, rather than trying to keep her from reaching her goal, which didn’t make any sense at all. But either way, she would still have time to think about it later, now that she finally had the answers she’d been looking for she was single-mindedly traveling across the Dark Forest, away from the Forbidden Fortress toward a crypt where Maleficent had hidden the still and cold body of the former Evil Queen. 

A shiver ran down Emma’s spine at the thought of finally having reached the end of her journey. It seemed so unreal. She had searched for Regina for ten whole years. Henry was now a little boy, slowly but steadily heading toward puberty and she had grown up as well. She wasn’t the eighteen-year-old whose water had broken in Regina’s car that fateful day. She’d accepted her role as Snow White and Prince Charming’s daughter, despite the years it had taken her to finally feel comfortable with a family completely consisting of fairytale characters.

Henry had taken to the Enchanted Forest like he hadn’t spent his first years in Storybrooke, he was an absolute natural and Emma was sure that Regina would be proud of the boy he’d become. 

“A sleeping curse,” Emma mumbled and climbed over a fallen log. Maleficent had put her under a sleeping curse and while it had been one of the possibilities on her long list of things that could’ve happened, she still didn't like it. 

Of course Henry’s dreams had been proof enough that Regina was really cursed, but hearing it from the woman responsible for it all was another thing altogether. 

Emma pulled her backpack over her shoulder and stopped for a moment to rest it on her raised her leg so that she could put the candle back inside. Had Maleficent wanted to come after her, she probably would’ve done so by now. 

She shouldered the backpack again and continued walking. The well-worn boots on her feet were a sign of how much she had already traveled and she was honestly quite sick of walking through the Dark Forest. As the name already suggested, it was always dark, rainy and just plain creepy. Luckily all the creatures living in these woods seemingly had decided to leave her alone for whatever reason. She didn’t need any more roadblocks, it had taken her long enough already to get to this point.

Regina would probably still knock her on her ass with magic simply for taking ten years to find her. What kind of hero took that long? Anyone else could’ve probably done a better job. 

Emma sighed and shook her head. Maybe she could plead extenuating circumstances. It had taken time to leave Storybrooke, she’d had to prepare to travel through a foreign realm, let alone get used to the whole idea of magic and real life fairytales. And she’d had to take care of Henry as well. More time had passed until she’d put together the pieces of what had actually happened after the curse broke. 

She’d talked to so many people over the years that their stories and faces tended to blur together. Some had been absolutely appalled by her plan to find the Evil Queen while others enjoyed their lives in Storybrooke and stayed behind. 

And then to track down the Huntsman, Graham, who had returned to the Enchanted Forest, and to convince him to tell her everything he knew about that last night had been absolutely nerve-wracking. He sure as hell hadn’t been a fan of Regina and she’d stuck to his heels for weeks and pestered him until he’d finally given in only to get rid of her and because she was Snow White’s daughter and he owed her. 

Whatever, Emma hadn’t cared about his reasons, the important thing was that he’d been with Regina before she’d disappeared. Things had slowly started to make sense from then on.

#-#-#

“Are you sure he’s not here?” Emma whispered, looking back at her companion as they snuck down a large corridor lined with pictures and statues. 

“Yes Emma, he isn’t here right now, I can’t smell him or his magic, but that doesn’t mean he can’t poof back any minute. Snow is going to kill me when she finds out about this,” Red hissed back and Emma rolled her eyes.

“Snow isn’t going to find out, now come on.” She kept moving in her semi-crouched position and stopped at the next corner to glance around and look into what seemed to be a dining room. 

“Why are we even whispering?” Red asked and pulled the cloak from her head, “the Dark One doesn’t need any guards. No one would be stupid enough to break into his castle.”

Emma looked over her shoulder to glare at Red, her own forest-green cloak still firmly pulled into her face. “Well, we are. Now stop complaining, you agreed to come along and we’ll go through with it.”

They crept through the dining hall until they reached yet another door. This entire castle was way too large for one man and it looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in years. The air had a cold bite to it and somewhere a noisy draft was traveling through the castle. 

Their approach had been made easier by the heavy fog all around the castle grounds and Emma hoped it wouldn’t lift until they were done. She reached out for the door and pulled it open before she slipped through with Red right at her heels. The next room looked quite promising as it contained a spinning wheel, some errand pieces of gold and other trinkets strewn about.

“Okay, you start over there and I’ll see what’s in all these trunks,” Emma said with a wave of her hand.

“Tell me again, what exactly am I looking for?” Red asked as she moved to a large cabinet and pulled open its glass doors.

“Anything that looks like it could tell us what happened after the curse broke, a spell, some kind of magical potion that says ‘kidnapping’ on it,” Emma replied and saw Red raise an eyebrow at her. “I don’t know, okay, just keep looking.”

Emma knelt down in front of the trunks, the cold of the marble underneath seeping through her leather pants. She rummaged through papers, contracts and fabrics but nothing looked like it had any connection to Storybrooke at all. Judging by the quiet huffs on Red’s end of the room she wasn’t doing much better.

She was just about to reach for a small mirror tucked into the corner of a large wooden chest when Red appeared beside her and grabbed her shoulders. Her fingers closed around the mirror as she was dragged across the room and into a closet filled with leather outfits that smelled like no one had worn them for a while. 

“What the hell?” Emma asked, slipping the small mirror into a pocket of her cloak. Red clamped a hand over mouth and nodded toward the small slit between the doors in front of them. 

A man had walked into the room was making his way toward the papers that were carelessly tossed onto the table in the center. 

“I didn’t notice him before because I was so focused on sniffing out the Dark One before he poofs himself on top of us,” Red whispered into Emma’s ear. 

Emma pried the hand away from her mouth and gave a quick nod to show that she’d understood. She peered through the crack between the doors and watched the figure walk about the room, depositing a few things here and there and shuffling through the papers on the desk. It was as if the person was looking for something as well and while they were much more familiar with the place it seemed like they weren’t finding what they were searching for either. The person sighed and finally turned in a way that gave Emma a clear look at the face that was partially hidden by a scarf. 

Her eyes widened and she pushed the doors to the closet open without a second thought. “Neal, what the fuck?”

Neal spun around and stared at her with an open mouth. 

“What are you doing?” Ruby hissed from behind her but took up a defensive position anyways.

“E-Emma… what…how?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Emma spat, “what the hell are you doing here?

“I’m… I’m… how did you get in here?” Neal stammered, his face still slack with shock. He was wearing typical Enchanted Forest clothes, leather pants, a long coat and leather vest underneath. He looked quite at home but Emma simply couldn’t make any sense of his presence. 

Now that she thought about it, she should’ve connected the dots between his appearance in Storybrooke and the fact that the curse had still been intact. No one should’ve been able to enter the town, unless…

“He smells like the Dark One, but not quite, there’s none of that magic there, but there’s something,” Ruby mumbled and narrowed her eyes at Neal.

Emma drew her sword with one swift motion and she had crossed the room before Neal even had chance to react. With a quick kick to the side of his knee he was stumbling forward with a curse and she pushed his upper body down onto the desk, her blade right at his neck. “Tell me how you are here, right now, or this will not end pretty.”

“Emma, just hold up,” Neal grunted and she pushed the sword deeper into his skin. 

“Talk Neal.”

She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t put two and two together before. Neal had to be from this world, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to get into Storybrooke and follow after her. After a while he had simply turned into a memory at the fringes of her consciousness while she had been focused entirely on raising Henry and searching for Regina. 

“Listen, I didn’t know you were from the Enchanted Forest when we met,” Neal said, the side of his faced still pressed against the table. “I realized what was going on after I came to Storybrooke the second time.”

Emma raised her eyebrows and scoffed. “Yeah after you left me to take the fall for you and go to prison. And then you didn’t even care enough to stick around while I was in a coma in a strange town.”

She heard Ruby growl from the other side of the table but kept her eyes on Neal. 

“The damn Evil Queen forced me to leave the first time,” Neal replied.

Emma clenched her jaw and grabbed the back of his neck to pull him up and turn him around so that he was leaning against the table and the tip of her sword was right there against his throat. “What do you know about her?”

“Shit, nothing Emma, what is going on with you? I don’t know anything, how was I supposed to know that a damn curse sent all these people from the Enchanted Forest to our world? Came as a surprise to me too.”

“But you’re from here, you just said so yourself. You weren’t in Storybrooke after the curse broke, how did you come back? And why are you in the Dark One’s castle?”

Neal opened his mouth to answer when Emma’s sword disappeared from her grasp in a plume of smoke. She stared at her fingers for a moment before she whirled around and  
came face to face with a scaly smile.

“He is my son of course, dearie,” Rumple replied.

Emma’s mouth fell open in shock and she quickly rushed around the table to stand beside Red. Neal didn’t know about Henry, or at least he hadn’t known the last time she’d seen him, so perhaps Rumplestiltskin was unaware too. And she wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible. 

“Red? Get us out of here,” she hissed and in the next second a red cloak was tossed into her arms. 

“Sure thing,” Red growled, her eyes flashing yellow.

“Now, now, not so fast,” Rumple said and raised his hand, but Neal grabbed his wrist. 

“Let them go, papa.”

Emma shot one last glance in Neal’s direction before she was rushing toward the doors at the far end of the room, the deep growl of a large black wolf accompanying her escape.


	7. It's So Cold Out Here In The Wilderness

“That’s a little cliché, even for this place,” Emma mumbled to herself as she hacked away at overgrown rose bushes with her sword. 

David had trained her in sword fighting until she’d been able to beat him after a few years and then he’d given her this particular sword with its razor-sharp blade and perfectly balanced weight to accompany her on her journeys. So far it had certainly been worth it and she couldn’t even recall how many people she'd threatened and creatures she’d fought. It really had been a very long quest.

But now that she was so close, her heart was beating faster and her stomach knotted in anticipation. 

The crypt Maleficent had described to her had to be hidden somewhere behind these thorns and she would stand here all day and keep chopping away at them if necessary. It seemed like Maleficent had taken a page out of, well, her own story, and had made it especially annoying for Emma. The thorns that she missed as she kept moving forward pulled at her clothes and scratched the exposed skin of her neck and cheeks. 

She had left the Dark Forest for a while only to find herself crossing an open field that looked not at all natural. It had almost seemed as if the giant dark trees refused to grow on this land where nothing but dead earth remained. Whatever had happened here must not have been pretty. 

She had been walking across the open field, the trees at her back and endless expanse of vast nothingness in front of her, until she’d discovered a large structure in the distance. With every step that raised the dust underneath her feet, the structure had taken on a distinct shape of something rectangular. She assumed that this was the entrance to the crypt, completely overgrown with black rose bushes. There were no petals though, only the stems with their sharp little thorns. 

Of course Maleficent couldn’t have picked a nice sunny, grassy meadow with a stream nearby and birds chirping in the trees. No, it had to be a creepy-ass crypt in the middle of an even creepier patch of dead land. 

Sweat was dripping down the side of her face and neck as she raised her sword again and again to cut down the vines. For what felt like hours she kept at it until her arms began to tremble and her muscles protested painfully. The wall of thorns and vines was so thick it was absolutely ridiculous. She was about to turn around and head back to the Forbidden Fortress to drag Maleficent by her pointy collar to this place so she would poof the rose bushes away, when her sword hit something solid and her entire body vibrated at the impact.

“The crypt,” Emma whispered and began clearing the area until it revealed a gray, solid wall made of large stones framing dark wooden double-doors. 

“Well, that does look promising,” Emma mumbled and continued to clear the doors until she could see them in their entirety. She glanced over her shoulder briefly to where her backpack was sitting a few feet away on the ground, noting the absolute silence around her, before she sheathed her sword and raised the back of her hand to wipe at the moisture gathering on her forehead. 

Her hand came away bloody and she frowned for a moment before she realized that her entire face felt like someone had used it as a pin cushion. She tugged on the sleeve of her white shirt and dabbed across her forehead and cheeks a few times. Tiny splotches of blood covered the fabric that was also torn in several places. 

Maybe she could’ve gone about this rose bush business a little more level-headed but the thought of Regina just being behind those ominous doors had spurred her into a frenzy of action. Instead of taking a rest, she patted her pockets to make sure she had everything she needed and stepped toward the doors. She rested her hands on either side of the black knobs and pushed forward. 

The doors opened slowly but steadily, the hinges creaking as if she was the main character in a terrible horror movie. The muscles in her arms and shoulders trembled at the effort as she pushed the doors far enough until she could slip through the crack and into the crypt. 

The air inside was cold and stale. The scent was entirely unpleasant but Emma had smelled worse, especially after her run-in with some bridge trolls. She crept forward, her eyes slowly adjusting to the semi-darkness. A little light filtered in through small windows high above her near the ceiling and she could make out a few broken pillars around the large room. There seemed to be some sort of altar at the far end and the remains of things that may have resembled large vases or statues along the sides. 

Regina, however, was nowhere in sight. Every step of her heavy boots against the stone floor echoed through the crypt like a whisper and Emma shivered lightly, a cold tingle creeping up her spine. Her hand was securely wrapped around the hilt of her sword as her eyes darted from one side to the other. 

But where the hell was Regina? 

The closer she moved to the altar at the other side of the crypt, the more suspicious she became. She had seen enough movies and read enough stories to know that she was probably about to be ambushed by something. Still, she kept walking steadily until she stood in front of the solid block of stone that came up to her waist. There were carvings on top of it but it wasn’t anything she recognized. Certainly no instruction manual on how to make Regina appear. 

She reached out and brushed her fingertips through the thick layer of dust when a slight breeze drifted across her wrist. She jerked her hand back and walked around the altar, holding out her hands in front of her to follow the cold draft that was coming from somewhere… below.

Emma raised her eyebrows and knelt down. She squinted at the part where the altar was resting on the stone floor and realized that there was definite crack there. She popped back to her feet and took a deep breath before she pressed both hands against the side of the altar and pushed with all her might. The massive block of stone moved surprisingly easy. 

She took a few steps forward until it felt like she’d pushed it as far as it would go and looked down to find a narrow staircase leading into ground below the crypt. Emma blew a few strands of hair that had come free of her ponytail out of her face and began her descent. She wasn’t exactly thrilled about moving even deeper into this eerie structure but there was nothing that could stop her now. 

#-#-#

“Emma, please, stay at least for Henry’s birthday,” Snow pleaded. 

Emma narrowed her eyes, that was a low blow and they both knew it. 

“You know I can’t,” Emma replied, stuffing a pair of leather boots deeper into her backpack, “I have to go.”

“No, you don’t. It was never your responsibility.”

They’d had this conversation many times over the years and Snow’s arguments never changed. She simply wasn’t capable of understanding what drove Emma to go on these dangerous journeys trying to find a woman she barely knew. 

Emma couldn’t really explain it either, but she knew that she had to find Regina. She had raised Henry for the first year of his life and somehow they had a strange connection even now. Henry kept dreaming about the woman he still called ‘mom’ and Emma had promised him she would find Regina, no matter how long it took. 

“I’m not arguing with you, not again, not right now,” Emma said between clenched teeth and closed the flap of her backpack, “I don’t need your support, I don’t even need you to understand, all I want is for you to accept that I will not stop looking for her.”

Snow sighed and shook her head slowly. Her shoulders slumped and she sat the edge of Emma’s bed, smoothing her hands over the pristinely white dress she was wearing. She looked as regal and wise as a queen but Emma had soon realized that no one had quite the poise Regina possessed. Even as the mayor she had moved with a deliberate grace that other queens could only envy. 

“You didn’t know her the way I did,” Snow said quietly, “I know you don’t want to hear it, but the kingdom is better off without her in it.”

“I may not have known the Evil Queen, but I knew Regina, the woman who took care of Henry when I couldn’t, and that is who I am searching for. I think you of all people should know that things aren’t as black and white as the fairytales tell them.”

Emma’s voice was quiet now too, almost resigned to the fact she wouldn’t be able to convince Snow that she had no other choice but to continue with her quest. She would never forgive herself if she didn’t. 

“I’m going to say goodbye to Henry,” she announced and pulled her dark blue leather vest over the white shirt she was wearing. She secured the sword to her hip and accepted the hug Snow bestowed upon her with a sad smile. 

She was glad she’d found her family, despite the arguments they might have she wouldn’t trade them for the world. She pressed a quick kiss to Snow’s cheek and hurried out of the room and down the hallway to make another stop before she went to see Henry. 

It was a rather short walk to the east wing of the castle. Whenever they had guests from other kingdoms they would reside here and Emma was especially glad that some people had arrived early for Henry’s birthday celebration.

She raised her fist and knocked twice before stepping back and waiting patiently. The door swung open after a few moments to reveal a smiling Abigail. 

“Emma,” she beamed and opened her arms for a quick hug. 

Emma grinned and glanced past her into the room. “Is it safe to come in?”

Abigail chuckled and stepped aside with a wave of her hand. “Yes, Frederic is currently out with Henry and your father doing some kind of manly activity.”

Emma laughed and walked into the room, depositing her backpack into a corner and walking toward the balcony that overlooked the forest to the east. 

“I’m assuming your visit means that you’re about to leave again,” Abigail said as she came to stand beside Emma and rested her arms on the stone railing. 

“Snow’s not happy about that,” Emma replied and Abigail patted her shoulder in understanding. 

They’d often talked about Emma going against the wishes of her family and while others were willing to help her along her journey for Emma’s sake, Abigail was truly the only one who had gotten to know Regina as a friend. She had babysitted Henry during his first year in Stroybrooke and it was pretty much impossible not to get attached to such a cute kid. 

Abigail had seen Regina and Henry interact, and she was very much in agreement with Emma that Regina didn’t deserve to be hidden away somewhere against her will.

“I’m not going to be here for Henry’s birthday, but I’m so close, I can’t delay it now.”

“He will understand, he always has. I think if you can make sure Regina is here for his next birthday everything will be more than forgiven,” Abigail offered with a smile. 

Emma sighed. “I hope so.”

“How soon are you leaving?”

“Right after I’ve spoken to Henry. I think I might finally know how to get close enough to the Forbidden Fortress without being turned into a piece of charcoal.”

Abigail’s eyes widened. “Are you sure? I mean, if everything we’ve learned so far is true, then Maleficent knows where Regina is.”

Emma raised an eyebrow and stared at her hands for a moment. “Exactly.”

“Finally,” Abigail breathed.

Emma looked up and let her gaze wander over the vast land of her family’s kingdom with furrowed brows. “Can you believe it has been this long?”

Abigail knew about her guilt and the fact that she blamed herself for taking this long to find Regina. No matter what anyone told her, she felt like she had let Regina down and would never be able to make up for the years that had been stolen from her. 

“So much has changed,” Abigail commented, “you’ve grown into a strong woman, Emma. You’re a warrior princess now.”

Emma smirked at Abigail at the reference. Who would’ve thought a fairytale princess could be so addicted to television programs from another realm? Emma was pretty sure Abigail had a portable DVD player stashed away somewhere too.

“What I’m saying is that you’ve done everything you could, from the very beginning, and you needed to become the woman you are now in order to find her.”

“You really think so?”

Abigail nodded and they both looked across the forest for a few silent minutes until Emma became too fidgety to stay any longer. She said her goodbyes to the woman who had become a good friend over the past years and crossed the castle once again in search of Henry. If he was with David they were either practicing his sword fighting skills or getting in trouble with some horses. 

She found them at target practice with Frederic who was one of the best archers on this side of the Enchanted Forest. 

Henry’s face was pinched with concentration as he aimed his arrow at the target made of hay with some red lines and a dot drawn in the middle. Emma stopped at the far end of the courtyard and watched with a smile as Henry’s tongue poked out of his mouth and he squinted to the point that Emma wasn’t sure he could still see anything at all. 

Frederic walked over to him and corrected his posture a bit before he gave him the go-ahead to shoot. The arrow swished through the air and hit the target between the inner rings. Not bad. Henry lowered his bow and studied the place where his arrow had struck the target with quiet scrutiny. The look reminded Emma so much of Regina that she felt a small pang in her chest before she cleared her throat and stepped forward. 

“Good shot,” she complimented and Henry whirled around. 

“Did you see, ma?” He passed his bow to David and launched himself into Emma’s arms. He was getting taller and heavier and Emma stumbled a few steps at the impact. She ruffled his hair and kissed his cheek. “I did, well done kid.”

She let him go and looked him over in his small leather pants and casual blue shirt. Typical Enchanted Forest attire that Henry seemed to enjoy even more than his normal clothes from Storybrooke. But who could blame him? He was a nine-year-old boy living the dream amongst fairytale characters, sword fights and magical creatures. He had taken to everything with much enthusiasm but Emma made sure to take him on ‘vacations’ back to Storybrooke after they'd managed to open a stable portal to remind him that there was more to reality than fairies and trolls.

Henry looked at her with his bright, inquisitive eyes. “Are you leaving?”

A stab of guilt made Emma release a small sigh. “Yeah, I have something I need to look into.”

“You think we’re getting closer?” Henry asked, his eyes glinting. 

Emma pulled him into another hug and nodded. “Yeah, I think so. But I’m sorry I can’t be here for your birthday.”

“That’s okay,” Henry answered with a shrug, “it’s important. And we can still talk, right?”

“Absolutely, I will make sure I have plenty of time to talk to you, promise.”

Henry nodded and they smiled at each other for a moment before David joined them. He seemed to already know that Emma was about to leave so he rested his hand on her shoulder and smiled at her with an encouraging nod. He wasn’t entirely happy with her quest either but he was a bit more understanding than Snow. 

Emma stayed with them for a little while longer and cheered for Henry whenever his arrow got anywhere near the middle of the target during practice. Her head was already on the road though. She had a goal this time, no more restless searching. She was on her way to the Dark Forest and hopefully on the right track toward finally finding what she had been looking for all this time.


	8. Right Before My Eyes It Came To Life

The stairs seemed to have no end, she just kept moving further and further into the dark and moist ground. The air became noticeably thinner and the only light came from the tiny compass in her hand. It was hard to see much at all but then again there wasn’t much to look at anyways. The stairs were framed by dark walls on either side and held up by pillars made of the same material. It seemed as if someone had dug their way down here and additionally made sure that it resembled an old tomb.

If she really found Regina down there and then had to lead her all the way up those stairs again she would certainly have to do so without a significant body part. Regina would probably rip her head off for all of this. It was her fault that the curse had been broken, so logically everything happening afterward had to be her fault as well, right?

Finally there was some kind light at the end of this dark and damp tunnel. She wasn’t sure if she could trust her eyes but when she closed the compass she could really see flickering light at the end of the stairs. 

Did that mean someone or something was waiting for her down there?

She gripped her sword again and treaded more lightly these last few steps as to not alert any possible threats waiting for her. She reached the end of the stairs and carefully peered around the corner to see what was waiting ahead. Instead of a troll or some sort of magical monster attacking her, she found herself looking at a large opening in the stone that led to a hall that seemed to be carved into stone rather than made of it. 

Her mouth fell open when she stepped into the room and stared at the ring of flames surrounding a black glass coffin. Her grip on the hilt of her sword went slack and all the discomfort her body had gone through in the past days simply disappeared to the back of her mind. 

“Regina,” she breathed out. 

There was a distinct shape behind the dark glass and even though she couldn’t make out the person’s features she was sure that it was indeed Regina resting in this coffin. Her heart was beating rapidly in her chest, almost as if trying to escape the confines of her ribcage. She wiped her sweaty hands against her thighs and crossed the distance of the hall until she was stopped by the heat of the flames.

Dragon’s breath? Of course Maleficent wouldn’t just make it easy for her. But how was she supposed to get through those flames without ending up as a charred pile of bones?  
Now that she wasn’t completely fascinated by the spectacle in front of her anymore, she took the time to look around. The room she was now in was much smaller than the crypt above her but still had a considerable size. Unlike the crypt, everything was still intact, no broken pieces of stone or crumbled statues. 

In fact, the carvings in the walls looked impeccable, not a speck of dust anywhere to be found. Despite the relative darkness, it was a beautiful room with the intricate designs on each wall and the pillars holding the ceiling at either side of the coffin. A few small stairs led up to the ring of fire like a throne and Emma had the feeling that there was more to these flames than met the eye. 

This reminded her of something, but she wasn’t exactly sure what it was. Either way she found herself drawn toward those flames, despite the heat that was licking at her exposed face and hands. The tiny cuts the thorns had left were especially painful but Emma couldn’t help herself. All she was able to focus on was that Regina was right there, within arm’s reach, finally. After all these year it felt almost unreal. 

She hoped with everything she had that this wasn’t just a trick of Maleficent. Given, the witch had sounded sincere, but that didn’t have to mean anything. 

Emma was now standing right in front of the wall of flames. The air was so thin that she was feeling lightheaded and she was sweating profusely. Instead of backing off like any sane person, she reached out and brushed her hand through the flames. All the heat dissipated suddenly and a chill ran through the room. The fire was still there but it had lost all of its warmth. It was more like a cool breeze now and Emma waved her hands around, completely fascinated by the fact that they disappeared into the flames again and again without any harm being done. 

She took a deep breath that did nothing to stop the hammering heart in her chest and stepped forward. The flames tugged at her clothes, but she remained completely safe as she moved through the wall of flames and found herself standing in front of the glass coffin, staring down at the prone figure below. 

Her breath hitched and she reached out, her hands trembling. Her skin made contact with the cool glass and she pushed the top part off to the side. It slid away silently to reveal the serene face of a sleeping Regina. 

Long lashes cast shadows across pale cheekbones and Emma stood completely frozen to the spot while she stared. Regina’s hair was longer, tied back into an intricate up-do. Her makeup was much darker and more prominent than she’d ever seen Regina wear, and judging by the leather pants and her semi-revealing corset, someone had put her back into her old Evil Queen attire. 

She was breathtakingly beautiful, even more so than Emma remembered. Her shaky hand reached out, about to brush her fingertips across a pale cheekbone, when she snatched it back to her chest. No, she wasn’t going to touch Regina without her permission. Too much had already happened against her will and Emma wasn’t going to add to that. Instead, she cast one last longing glance at the sleeping woman before she turned around. She was surprised to find that the flames had simply vanished, but that would only make her task much easier. 

She retraced her steps, down the small set of stairs and toward the entrance of the room where there was more space. She grabbed the small pouch that was fastened to her belt and dug around until her fingers found the mirror she was looking for. She held it in front of her face and cleared her throat.

Her heart was still beating a bit erratically and her hands were clammy and shaking with nervous anticipation. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this uneasy. 

“Hey Henry, you there? Can you hear me?”

Henry’s face appeared in the small mirror and he smiled at her. “Hey ma.”

“I’ve found her,” Emma breathed out and Henry’s smile slipped away. He was probably wearing the same expression that she had on her face.

“Really?” His voice was small, almost as if he was trying to hold back the hopeful tone.

“Yeah, really, she’s here.” Emma tilted the mirror just so that he could see the coffin behind her shoulder. “Are you ready for this?”

Henry squared his shoulders and gave a determined nod, reminding her a lot of his grandfather. 

“Okay, tell David what’s going on while I set everything up and we’re a go for the last part of Operation Hawk.”

“I’m on it,” Henry replied and disappeared from the small mirror. Emma took another deep breath and smiled. Operation Hawk is what Henry had termed her quest to find Regina about a year and a half ago. After he’d learned about hawks and their incredible eyesight, he’d wanted to give their secret operation a fitting name. Even though not much was secret about Emma’s journeys, it made Henry feel like he was part of it when she was gone.

With these thoughts in mind, Emma pulled the last remaining item from the pouch at her hip. It was a small magically reinforced satchel that contained the most precious possession of the fairies. She opened the shimmering satchel and looked inside. The small amount of fairy dust was just waiting to be used and after all these years it would finally fulfill its purpose. 

“Okay, I’m ready,” Henry said and Emma glanced from the dust back to the mirror. 

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I am.”

Emma nodded and reached into the satchel until a small pile of fairy dust was cradled in her palm. “Okay close your eyes, think of where you want to be right now.”

Henry did as he was told and Emma closed her eyes as well, picturing Henry standing right in front of her in this room. She took a breath and blew it across the fairy dust so that it flew out of her hand and toward the mirror that she was still holding in the other. 

She squeezed her eyes shut for several seconds, wishing with everything she had for this to work when Henry’s voice suddenly sounded much closer. “We did it.”

Emma’s eyes flew open and she had just enough time to put the mirror aside before Henry had launched himself into her arms and was squeezing her as tightly as a ten-year-old could. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed a flurry of kisses against his forehead. 

“It worked,” she breathed and closed her eyes, holding Henry against her, breathing in his familiar comforting scent that reminded her of home.

“Of course, you’re the hero so it had to work.”

Emma smiled and leaned back to look at Henry. He stared back at her with a large grin, but then frowned. “Are you okay though?”

Emma raised her eyebrows in question but then remembered that she had angry little scratch marks from the rose bushes all over her face and hands. She nodded quickly. “I’m fine, promise, these are just scratches.”

She reached out and ruffled his hair. “I’ve done my part, now are you ready to be the hero?”

Henry nodded and once again a determined glint entered his eyes. “I can do it.”

“Okay then.” She finally stepped back and allowed Henry to get a look at his surroundings. He took everything in with wide eyes until his gaze landed on the dark glass coffin. His mouth fell open slightly and he took a few hesitant steps forward until he halted and looked over his shoulder at her. 

Emma nodded encouragingly and motioned for him to go on. He faced the coffin again and ascended the stairs until he could look inside. Emma bit her bottom lip and smiled. With his dark trousers, boots, vest and leather jacket in royal colors he looked just like a little prince, ready to rescue the princess from a dark curse.

“She looks exactly like in my dreams,” Henry breathed and Emma followed him slowly until she had circled around the coffin and was standing on the other side. She looked down at Regina as well and nodded. 

“She hasn’t aged a day since I last saw her.”

“Do you think it will work?” Henry whispered.

She reached out and rested her hand on his shoulder, prompting him to tear his eyes away from Regina. 

“I know that it will. She has been with you all this time and I know she wants to be here with you as well.”

Henry gulped and nodded. “I’m just gonna do it.”

Emma nodded and smiled encouragingly, silently holding her breath.

He braced himself on the edge of the glass coffin and after one last look at Emma, leaned forward until he could press a small kiss against Regina’s forehead. His eyes were scrunched shut and he seemed to pour every single ounce of concentration into this kiss.

#-#-#

She pursed her lips at the flames on the other side of the room and crossed her arms in front of her chest. She wasn’t afraid of them anymore. Not when she knew that they didn’t stand a chance against the freeing presence of her little savior each and every time. 

She furrowed her brow and tapped her fingers against her arm for a moment. It always took a while to remember his name but it came back to her much more easily now. Henry. She was waiting for Henry. 

A small smile crossed her features at the thought of him and she began walking up and down the side of the room that wasn't encompassed in flames yet. Something felt different. There was something in the air and her skin crawled with an unexpected sense of anticipation. She knew that this room never changed, except for when Henry appeared to spend time with her. It was strange really, sometimes she could remember him, and sometimes he was more like a dream – indistinct and only connected to her by a certain feeling of affection. 

But she had long since accepted the peculiarities of this place. Not that she had any idea of where she was, how she’d gotten here and how much time had passed since she’d first remembered being here. 

She brushed her hand across the arm of her blazer to dislocate a non-existent piece of lint when her mouth fell open in shock. She wasn’t wearing her blazer anymore. Instead she was suddenly clad in tight leather pants and a deep red corset with a flowing half skirt.

“What am I wearing?” she whispered but her voice was drowned out by the crackling flames.


	9. Finally Arrived

“Did… did it work?” Henry asked quietly, his eyes trained on Regina’s face. 

“I don’t-“

Before Emma could finish her sentence, deep brown eyes flew open with a gasp and stared straight ahead at the ceiling of the room. Both Emma and Henry froze for several shocked seconds before they broke into a flurry of movement. 

They had agreed that if their plan worked, Emma would be the one to explain everything to Regina, who would most likely be unaware of how much time had actually passed. So Emma quickly hurried around the coffin and down the stairs to the open part of the room where Henry was already waiting for her, bouncing on his feet. 

“Good job kid, I know you could do it. I’ll see you soon.” She pulled him into a one-armed hug before she opened her palm and blew the fairy dust in his direction. 

Henry sported the biggest grin she’d ever seen as the dust enveloped him. “Make sure she gets home safe, ma.”

“I will,” Emma answered but Henry had already disappeared. She quickly glanced down at the mirror in her other hand to see Henry stumbling into his room at the castle. Quickly pocketing the mirror, she turned back around and with a few strides stood beside the coffin again.

Regina was still staring straight ahead but a small furrow between her brows indicated that she was indeed awake and trying to make sense of the situation.

Emma cleared her throat nervously, her hands gripping the edge of the glass coffin so hard that it was cutting into her palms. “Regina?”

Even with her voice barely above a whisper, it still sounded like she had screamed into the quiet emptiness of the room. Brown eyes snapped to her face and recognition flashed in them as Regina scowled. 

Emma attempted to smile but it probably looked more like a pained grimace. “How do you feel?”

Regina’s scowl deepened and she tried to sit up. Her face morphed into a pained expression and Emma immediately reached out to rest one hand against Regina’s shoulder and the other at the small of her back. 

Regina swatted at her half-heartedly while she struggled into a sitting position. “Miss Swan, I don’t know what you’re trying to do here-“

Emma noticed that Regina’s voice was hoarse from misuse but it was an incredible thing to hear that dark timbre again. She almost laughed out loud at the sight of Regina in front of her, breathing, talking, alive. 

Regina had trailed off as soon as she’d had a moment to look around and now Emma found herself staring into confused brown eyes.

“What… is going on?”

The Blue Fairy had warned her that Regina may have trouble recollecting certain things after being under a sleeping curse for so long. And that she would most likely have trouble accessing her magic for a while as she hadn’t used it in a decade.

Emma’s hands still hovered over Regina’s shoulder and back, just in case she fainted or something equally dramatic happened. “What is the last thing you remember?” 

Regina’s brow furrowed once again and Emma drank in every single little expression on the other woman’s face. They were even more entertaining and endearing than she recalled. She’d spent a lot of time thinking about Regina and remembering every little thing she’d learned in the brief time she’d known her, but now everything seemed so new and yet so familiar. 

Regina finally tore her eyes away from her surroundings and looked down at herself, holding her hands up in front of her. “What am I wearing?”

Slowly she turned her head to stare at Emma, taking in her clothes and the sword at her hip. “We’re not in Storybrooke anymore, are we?”

#-#-#

Regina knew that she should be doing something to stop this, anything really, but she could watch in morbid fascination as her old friend grabbed her wrist and jammed her index finger onto the tip of the needle. A drop of blood burst from the broken skin, making its way down her palm.

“Male…ficent…?”

Her body suddenly ceased to follow her commands and her legs felt like lead. Before they gave out completely and she hit the ground without any ability to brace herself, Maleficent had caught her around the waist and held her cradled in a loose embrace. 

She stared up at her old friend’s face as so many memories from her past assaulted her. “What have you done?” she whispered, her lips barely forming the words as a heavy sleepiness settled over her. 

Maleficent smiled but her eyes appeared almost sad. “You’ve given up everything to curse us, my friend, and yet your happy ending is nowhere in sight.”

Regina’s eyes slowly closed, her body losing the fight against the curse. “Why…?”

“Perhaps you’ll thank me one day. Sleep now, your time will come to return.”

The last thing Regina saw before darkness engulfed her was Maleficent’s face and the strange expression she didn’t know what to make of. She was aware of her body being lowered to the ground but then even those sensations dulled until there was nothing but empty darkness. 

Until the flames.

#-#-#

“Regina, I promise I will explain everything as best as I can, but we should really get out of here. Now.”

Emma was still hovering beside the coffin, watching Regina struggle. Every single one of her attempts to simply lift Regina out of it had been rebutted with a small insult or an eye-roll, so she had turned to simply waiting for Regina to give in once she had exhausted herself. But apparently that wasn’t going to happen.

“You will tell me what is going on here, right now,” Regina answered and managed to push herself over the edge of the coffin. 

The entire coffin was put on a large block of stone that had the same dark color as the walls around them and it barely reached up to Emma’s hip. Normally it shouldn’t have been a problem for anyone to climb out of it but Regina clearly didn’t have the strength for that just yet. 

She was just about move herself to the ground when she stumbled and flailed around a little, falling right into Emma’s waiting arms. Despite Regina cursing quietly under her breath, Emma smiled as she held her in a loose embrace and helped her get to her feet. 

“You find this funny?” Regina hissed as she was standing in front of Emma, her hands hovering somewhere above Emma’s forearms as if she didn’t know where to put them. 

Emma had her hands on Regina’s waist and despite trying her best to keep that smile under control she was just too happy to have the woman she had searched for the past ten years right in front of her. 

“No, sorry, I’m just glad to see you,” she replied and found herself scrutinized by a dark gaze.

Regina was studying her face rather intently and Emma relaxed her features, giving Regina time to find what she was looking for.

“You’re different,” Regina eventually said, her eyebrows rising to her hairline. Her hands landed on Emma’s forearms, apparently forgotten. 

“Yeah, you could say some things have changed.”

Regina shook her head slowly and lifted one hand to press her fingertips against her brow, her eyes moving from Emma to look down at herself. “I don’t understand. I remember being in Storybrooke, and we were going to have dinner, I had already prepared everything. After that I can’t seem to recall much else. What happened?”

For the first time the indignation and annoyance dropped from Regina’s voice and she sounded genuinely confused. Emma’s heart went out to her and she smiled again. “Come on, let’s get you out of here and I’ll explain everything once we’re back above ground.”

Regina finally took a step back and looked over shoulder at the dark glass coffin. “Above ground?”

Emma nodded and gestured for Regina to descend the short set of stairs. “Yes, we’re going to have to walk a little, you think you’re up for it?”

“I’m fine,” Regina answered with a small scoff as she walked ahead. Emma stared for a few seconds, mesmerized by the way Regina moved in these clothes, the red corset that flared out at her hip and completely exposed the front of her tight leather pants and heeled boots. With the poise and composure of a queen.

Emma shook herself out of it and quickly followed after Regina, just in case she lost her footing again. But Regina suddenly stopped and spun around so that Emma almost ran into her. 

“Wait a moment, we’re not in Storybrooke anymore and someone clearly thought it clever to put me into these clothes,” Regina said, gesturing toward herself. Emma obediently nodded until Regina continued. “That means my curse was broken and it also means you were involved.”

Emma’s eyes widened at Regina’s scowl. “What? Why me?”

“Because you’re here right now, in the Enchanted Forest no less. No one should’ve been able to destroy the Dark Curse.”

“Well, there was a way apparently, and you’re right, I had something to do with it.” Emma smiled sheepishly and Regina glared at her a moment longer before she turned back around and stalked through the room toward the entrance that Emma had first come through. 

The darkened stairs leading up an even darker corridor gave Regina pause but she simply squared her shoulders and began her ascend without another word. Emma was right at her heels, averting her eyes to her own boots with a small grin still firmly in place. 

#-#-#

When they finally emerged from the crypt, the sun was beginning to disappear below the horizon and the entire scene was painted in a deep red and orange light. Regina turned back around and scrutinized the crypt and its surrounding rose bushes. “Is that what happened to your face?”

She hadn’t spoken for their entire journey back up to the surface and Emma had found herself craving to hear that rich voice again. 

“Yeah, I should’ve been more careful but I was trying to hurry…” Emma trailed off and shot Regina a quick glance before she recovered her backpack from her she’d left it upon her arrival on the ground a few feet away from them. 

Regina stared at the crypt with a pensive look on her face, then looked down at her hands, frown deepening.

“I think we should get going before the sun sets fully, we can make it back to the tree line before dark and set up camp.”

“Set up camp?” Regina turned to regard Emma with the same thoughtful expression. So far she’d been fairly compliant but Emma knew that questions were just brewing under that deceitfully calm exterior.

“You seem quite at home here, like this,” Regina commented and began walking in the direction Emma indicated.

“You could say that I guess, but I’ve been always quick to adapt.”

Regina hummed quietly, the back of her cloak brushing across the dust beneath her feet. “So you are the daughter of Snow White and her sheepherding husband.”

Emma shot a glance toward the woman now walking beside her, shoulders pulled back and spine straight, exuding regal composure with every step. She must’ve figured out by now that her magic wasn’t working but Emma wasn't going to comment on that until Regina herself wanted to broach the subject.

“I am, but I had no idea when I first came to Storybrooke. It was really more of an accident that I ended up on your lawn.” Emma rested her hand against the hilt of her sword and pointed toward her backpack. “Would like anything to drink or some food?”

Regina dismissed her question with a shake of her head, eyes wandering around distractedly. “That still doesn’t explain how you managed to travel between realms. It isn’t that easy of a task, I would know.”

“That’s part of a much longer story,” Emma replied, her gaze returning to the woman beside her, “and I promise I will tell you, but I want to be sure you’re up for it first.”

A wry smile crossed Regina’s deep red lips. “Like when I told you that you’d been in a coma for a year?”

Emma smiled and snorted quietly. “Pretty much yeah.”

“You should be aware that I am giving you the benefit of the doubt here Miss Swan, and patience is not one of my strong suits. I will have those answers, sooner or later, but I am willing to go along with whatever you are planning for now.”

“Okay, I can work with that,” Emma replied. 

They walked in companionable silence for a while until the sun had fully disappeared and a pale moon faintly illuminated their path. Emma found her attention drawn back to Regina again and again, as if she just couldn’t make her eyes follow her silent instructions. Regina didn’t seem to notice or she simply didn’t care as her face remained mostly impassive. Emma knew a lot of thinking was going on behind these deep brown eyes but neither of them were quite ready to delve into the story Emma still owed. 

“So, the last thing you remember was cooking dinner?” Emma asked, apparently breaking Regina from her musings as she turned her head and nodded. 

“Something else must’ve happened, something magical, otherwise I wouldn’t have found myself in a glass coffin underneath a crypt back in the Enchanted Forest. That much is obvious. But what I don’t understand is why you of all people were there when I woke up.”

Emma grinned and shrugged her backpack up to rest more comfortably against her shoulders. “I mean, you know our family motto, I will always –“

“Do not finish that sentence or I swear it will be the last thing that ever comes out of your mouth.” 

Regina’s eyes flashed dangerously and Emma smirked. It felt so good to hear that dark voice again that it sent shivers down her spine every time, and Regina could threaten and insult her as much as she wanted, it would only make her grin broader.


	10. Home Again

Emma dropped her armful of firewood with a quiet groan and slowly made her way over to where a small fire was crackling. She stared for a moment, her eyes transfixed as she remembered stepping through a wall of flames just mere hours ago. 

Her gaze shifted and landed on Regina, who was sitting with her back against a log. Despite the setting, she looked as regal as ever and Emma found that she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the shadows dancing across the other woman’s face. 

Brown eyes eventually snapped in her direction and a perfectly shaped eyebrow rose in a questioning manner. “You’ve been staring at me ever since I woke up inside that crypt and I’m not sure if I should be flattered or annoyed,” Regina drawled.

Emma felt heat creeping up her neck and she quickly averted her eyes to look into the fire again. “Sorry about that, I’m just…glad you’re okay.”

Regina hummed quietly and returned to her silent musings. They hadn’t spoken much since setting up camp. Emma still refused to tell her exactly what had happened and how both of them had ended up in the Enchanted Forest, basically in the middle of nowhere. 

Emma settled on the other side of the small fire on a tree stump and nudged her bedroll in Regina’s direction. “You should get some rest before sunrise, we have a bit of a walk ahead of us.”

“I’m not tired,” Regina replied and crossed her legs at the ankle with a frown. “What I do need, however, is a change in clothes. As much nostalgic fondness I may have for these outfits, they were not made for walking long distances."

Emma took that as an invitation and allowed herself to study Regina’s clothing once more. “What were they made for then?”

“Intimidation,” Regina replied immediately, a small smirk curling the corner of her mouth, “and seduction.”

Luckily the small fire didn’t provide enough light for Regina to see Emma’s neck and cheeks heating up. As much as she had imagined finally seeing Regina again, she couldn’t have possibly anticipated that she would turn back into a schoolgirl with a crush. She was a grown woman, for crying out loud, and yet Regina knew exactly how to throw her off. 

She had been intimidated by Regina back in Storybrooke, and maybe a little bit infatuated, but somehow the dynamic between them had changed. Regina had yet to comment on the obvious changes, but as they were still putting off that conversation Emma had no idea what to make of Regina’s attitude.

“There’s a town half a day’s walk from here, I’m sure we’ll find something for you to change into,” Emma eventually commented. 

“Alright, and then what? What is the destination of this little journey?”

Emma poked at the logs in the fire with a stick and rested her hands on her knees to lean forward a little. “I promise that you will be safe there, and once we’ve made it, I will tell you everything I know that happened before and after the curse.”

“Somewhere I’m safe? Now that’s an interesting clue. There aren’t many places in the Enchanted Forest where people are not calling for my head on a pike, you know.”

“No one is going to lay a hand on you, I will make sure of that.”

The vehemence in Emma’s voice seemed to surprise Regina and she fell silent again, staring into the flames in front of her before flinching away as if somehow they would reach out and touch her.

Emma was immediately on her feet. “Are you alright?”

Regina shook her head and her eyes seemed to focus again as her brow furrowed. “I am, but for a moment there, I thought… never mind. Perhaps I should get some rest after all.”

Unsure of what she could do to help Regina or make her more comfortable, Emma dropped back onto the tree stump and watched as Regina grabbed the bedroll and placed it behind her head, still leaning against the log. She was facing away from her, but Emma could tell that Regina wasn’t sleeping by tense line of her shoulders. 

With a quiet sigh she placed more dry branches into the fire and looked up at the dark tree tops. Sunrise couldn’t come fast enough.

#-#-#

Emma peered over her shoulder once again, making sure that no one was within hearing distance before she pulled the small mirror from her backpack and held it up in front of her face. 

“Hey kid, you there?”

“Copy that,” Henry replied as his face swam into focus. 

Emma smiled and played along. “The eagle has landed, ETA nineteen-hours.”

Henry laughed happily and the picture blurred a little until he appeared again, this time sitting at his desk and propping it against something so that his entire upper body was visible. “Are you really this close?”

“Yeah, we’re just making a quick stop and we should be there in a few hours. Make sure everything is set up, okay? Let Abigail know we’re close, I don’t want any surprises.”

“I will,” Henry nodded and fumbled with a piece of paper from the table in front of him, “how… is she alright? Has she said anything about me?”

Emma’s heart contracted in her chest at the hopeful look in Henry’s large eyes. “Listen Henry, right now she doesn’t remember much, it’s the aftereffects of the curse. It may take a while, keep that in mind. She isn’t doing it on purpose, but I promise everything will be alright.”

“I know,” Henry replied with a small smile. He was obviously expecting more but he was also a smart kid. Emma was certain he understood what was happening and would act accordingly. 

“I’ll see you soon, okay? No more traveling, just you and me showing Regina around.”

“I want that,” Henry replied, his grin back in full force. 

Emma quickly glanced over her shoulder and raised her free hand so that Henry could see her fingertips wriggling. “I gotta go, later kid.”

“Over and out,” Henry replied and his face disappeared. 

Emma quickly spun around and saw Regina emerging from one of the smaller buildings at the outskirts of the town. It had taken them a while to find a place that sold clothes that Regina deemed acceptable. Of course there would be no pantsuits in those selections but the image that greeted Emma more than made up for that.

Regina’s face was free of all the dark makeup and she looked years younger. Even younger than in Storybrooke. Her long hair was tied back into a braid while a few loose strands framed her face and made her seem gentler somehow. Her pants and vest were a light pastel color while the fur around her shoulders set off the darkness of her hair. 

Emma was quite literally speechless. Her tongue felt too big for her mouth and all moisture seemed to have suddenly disappeared. 

Regina was still walking toward her with a small backpack in her hand. She came to a halt a few feet away. “At least hardly anyone will recognize me now,” Regina grumbled, tugging at the bottom of her vest. Her eyes narrowed as she looked up at Emma and she held out her hand. “Would you mind?”

For a moment Emma was unsure what to do. Her first impulse was to get down on one knee and press her lips to the back of Regina’s hand, but that surely wouldn’t be very appreciated. 

“The mirror, Miss Swan,” Regina elaborated with a raise of her eyebrow.

“Oh, yeah, sorry, here,” Emma handed it over to Regina and turned away under the guise of picking up her backpack. She took a quiet breath and exhaled it slowly.  
When she turned back around Regina was still studying her reflection, tilting the small mirror this way and that. 

“It’s been a long time since I’ve worn my hair this way,” she eventually said and returned the mirror to Emma.

“It looks great, I mean you look great, I mean…everything’s fine.” Emma cleared her throat and found Regina looking at her with an amused expression on her face. 

“Okay, I think we should get going,” she announced and turned on her heel. 

#-#-#

Another sunset, the second one in Regina’s company, and Emma was still as happy as she could be. They’d conversed a little during their walk, talking a bit about Regina’s memories of the Enchanted Forest, while Emma regaled her with stories of doing some explorations of her own. 

From time to time they almost touched on the topic of why all of this was even happening, but somehow they managed to skirt around it. 

When Emma looked at Regina walking beside her in the golden light of the setting sun, she saw absolutely no trace of the Evil Queen. All the stories and books seemed so obsolete. All she wanted to do was rewrite them and put into words what she saw in that moment. 

As the tips of the towers of Abigail’s castle appeared on the horizon Emma quickened her step and gripped the straps of her backpack a little tighter. She was nervous. Not because she was bringing Regina here, she knew Abigail would be welcoming her old friend with open arms. They’d spoken at length about what would happen when she finally found Regina and Abigail had promised that Regina would find refuge and protection in her kingdom and castle. 

But there so many things she just couldn’t predict. What about Henry? What about Snow and David finding out that their former enemy was back in the Enchanted Forest?

Emma stepped onto the familiar road and glanced toward the village in the east that surrounded half of the castle’s walls. They wouldn’t be passing through there, instead they were following the road in the west that would lead them straight to a large pair of gates, the entrance to the inner courtyard of the castle. 

Regina hadn’t quite caught up to her yet and when Emma looked over shoulder she found her frowning at the sight of the castle in the distance. 

“Please, just trust me on this,” Emma said when Regina stood beside her. Their eyes met for a brief moment and Regina gave a small, barely perceptible nod.

Together they set out again and found themselves in front of the open gates shortly before sundown. Two guards were waiting on either side of the road and silently placed their fists on their chests when Emma and Regina entered. 

Emma was a few steps ahead of her as she led the way past the castle’s walls and toward the courtyard. There weren’t many people around at this time and their steps echoed from the ground up toward the tall stone walls.

Only one pair of boots could still be heard as Emma froze. Two people had stepped outside in front of them and she stared at a broadly smiling Abigail who had both hands resting on Henry’s shoulders.

Henry was almost vibrating with excitement and she could tell that it took all of his ten-year-old patience to stay in place. 

Regina finally caught sight of them as she stopped next to Emma and her look of casually constructed indifference slipped away to reveal eyes filled with absolute confusion. Brown eyes flickered briefly over to Emma before they were fixed on the two approaching figures. 

The small backpack slung over Regina’s shoulder dropped to the ground with a dull thud as her lips parted in a silent gasp. Her eyes widened and she seemed torn between stepping forward and turning around to escape this place.

“H-Henry?”

Nothing could hold Henry anymore as he broke into a run at the voice of the woman he still called ‘mom’. In the blink of an eye he had launched himself into Regina’s arms and buried his face against her stomach. Regina’s arms wrapped around him so tightly, as if she never wanted to let him go again. Brown eyes filled with tears and Emma felt her own eyes watering at the sight. This was exactly why she’d never stopped searching all these years. 

“Oh Henry,” Regina breathed and a solitary tear ran down her cheek as she closed her eyes and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another installment complete, another cliffhanger, but what can I say? I had fun writing this story and exploring Emma's journey. I can promise one thing: the next part will have much much more Regina/Emma interactions. I know this might feel like a glacial pace slow burn story, but I guess this is the way it turned out.
> 
> I hope it won't take as long to write the next installment, I will try my best. please leave a comment and let me know what you thought. thank you for reading.


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